


Perpetual Love Machines

by eggblue



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Angst, M/M, Robot Sex, Supernatural and J2 Big Bang Challenge 2010
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-30
Updated: 2010-07-30
Packaged: 2017-11-03 00:39:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 24,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/375130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eggblue/pseuds/eggblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AI: Artificial Intelligence (2001) AU</p><p>After the Apocalypse comes, love, home, god, and loyalty are ideas stolen from fairy tales. But the love mecha named Kinky Dean - with Sam the mechanical dog by his side - wants to make the saddest angel in world happy in the only way he knows how. Together they will remake the Impala, the woman they all know as Mary, the future world itself. But can a home be found in a future where everything real is obsolete?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to xxamlaxx!
> 
> [Art](http://fuckyeahkarabou.livejournal.com/3238.html) by Karabou <3

Those were the years after the Apocalypse had come, and fire had rained down on the world, and the oceans had consumed whole cities, leaving the prosperous, free, and lucky in their wake. The survivors were lonely, and the resources scarce, and so a bargain was struck among the living to create help in the form of robots - robots whose needs were so different, so much easier - who did not feel or want or consume, but would complete whatever task they were given, which was their sole purpose for being.

Time passed, and still the angel Castiel remained, and he watched. He could, if he wanted, do nothing but watch. His needs were so like the robots - the mechas - so few and unchanging. While the other angels had died in the fire or simply disappeared, Castiel had stayed. He stayed and watched his beloved brothers and even more beloved humans die, until he was neither part of one nor the other any longer.

If he tried very hard to remember, he could recall certain images and feelings of the time of the Second Fall, but it was difficult for him, and painful. There had been heaven, and there had been Dean. The two had never - would never, now - be reconciled, not in his mind, nor anywhere. So on the day he could no longer hear the thoughts of the living or remember where the dead had gone, Castiel walked into the forest and never went back.

Castiel moved blindly forward in time. Castiel contemplated.

When angels were born, they were created by a protocol - a covenant with God that they had no will to refuse. It was sealed into their very existence, in a language before the Enochian. To Castiel, it was like a spell. Somehow, Dean had broken it, and with a few simple English words, the touch of his hands, the beat of his fragile soul, Castiel had broken his covenant with God, and begun his covenant with Dean. It made less sense to him now, the less he remembered. "Are you sure?" Dean had asked. "Silly man. Of course I'm not sure," Castiel had answered, and lost his heart completely.

What he did remember was a very long time ago. God created angels to do his will. God created the Earth in more complexity than Paradise. God created mankind to love him. With love came free will, the birth of metaphor, irony, dreams - things not meant for angels to understand. Then, the greatest irony of all - man turned away from God, as all His children had, and created machines in their own image - robots, mechas, meant to serve them. Castiel found them very strange indeed, these servile things made from light, electricity, and metal. They were a superior kind of angel, truly without the ability to doubt. Sometimes, he envied them. They even looked human, with their synthetic skin, wet eyes, and fake emotions, but they would never be real - they did not know hunger, or love, or free will. Castiel had stopped being able to hear his vessel's thoughts many lifetimes ago; indeed, he had forgotten his name, though he still wore his body as his own. The only difference from then, if he remembered anything correctly at all, was that now, sticking out from the back of the forgotten Jimmy Novak's coat, was a pair of pristine white-feathered wings.

*

Mary and John Smith were oh so nice. Adam, their son, was nice too, stuck in his glass case, cold to wet noses, fun to lick. Sam sat by his side all day long, watching his young chest rise and fall. He had been Sam's favorite toy - favorite boy - and Sam had been his, always, best, always. Adam was sleeping right now, but he would awake again, come play, and everything would be just as it used to be. Sam would wait for him, that's what he would do.

Through the actions of those far beyond him, Sam had come home, to a company home, the first prototype of his kind. He had long flowing locks that would never tangle, and a long pointed snout with a snub nose. Bright, warm eyes - brown ringed golden ringed green - and a tail that wagged, never tired. His one rare gift, his voice, was breathy and rumbling and not flat, through it had always sounded flat to human ears, due to his constancy of emotion, though as with many things, Sam was not aware of this.

"Would you like me to sleep? Where would you like me to sleep? I do not need sleep. I do not need to be let out in the yard, or taken for walks. I will never have fleas."

"Do you... bark?" They asked him.

"Yes." Sam showed them. He wagged his tail. "Would you like to pet me? I would like that. Very much. I will lick your arms and wag my tail if you would pet me."

So the Smiths did. Sam was very, very happy. When his masters were home, he would follow them around from living room to bedroom to kitchen; he would wait by Adam's side to make sure he was not yet awake, chest rising and falling in his glass case. When they were not home, he would wait with Adam still, or on the rug inside the front door, and wait for signs of their arrival, tail wagging with the slightest hope.

On the day when the sick boy did awake, it was the happiest time of all. Adam would love him then, and take him on walks every day. But the boy was not ready right away, so Sam lay by the bed and waited some more. He seemed different, this boy who was no longer in the glass case - as if someone else had taken his place, some impostor. Sam was wary. Sometimes he watched the digital screen while Adam played fighting games with bright flashes, or old movies where other women named Mary sang like birds and floated with umbrellas. Funny games and funny songs, but Sam liked them anyway, because they were Adam's.

Mary and John gave Adam all their attention too. They no longer hugged Sam and patted his head when they walked in the door. They showed no desire to hear him speak, or bark, or let him lick them with his tongue. Sam sat with his head on his paws and waited.

One day, Adam had friends over. It was very exciting for Sam, because he had been so lonely, and he wanted so much to be loved and useful. A tall boy with curly brown hair walked over to him and tried to catch Sam's constantly-wagging tail. When he pulled, Sam yelped. He couldn't help it; it was not a nice thing the boy had done. Adam waved his hand. "Oh, him? That's Sam. He used to be a Super-Toy, but now he's old and stupid."

Grrrrr. "I am not... a toy!" Sam looked around the room in a panic, and caught sight of something behind him, but it was only his own tail, and he stopped chasing it after a time. He had to think of a way to show he was not a toy - he was a dog - and he was useful, not old and stupid.

He did his best and stood by the table while everyone ate soft dark squares and sang songs around little lighted sticks, all surrounded by bright floating balls. All of it, all of it looked like it would be fun to stick his nose in, eat, and bite down on with his teeth. As soon as they left to go swimming in the pool, he explored every curiosity, licking sweet chocolaty frosting until the paper plates were clean and gnawing at the funny tasting plastic balls until they popped, the loud noise sending him running to hide in the pantry. When John found him, he had been so angry that he closed the door. Sam lay down on his side and waited, no longer able to move. John took him along to work the next day to clean out his circuits of burned sugar and cake particles. He didn't talk the whole way, and Sam whined a little through his nose just to remind John that he could.

Adam asked him questions when he was bored, but Sam had been wary ever since his new toys became gun-shaped, or blunt sticks, or firecrackers. He missed balls. "Where'd you get that collar?" Adam asked.

Sam didn't know how to answer. "I've always had this collar." He wore it around his neck on a red leather ring.

"Well, yeah, duh. But do you know what it is?"

"I don't know. Will you describe it to me?" Like many things, he was aware of its existence, but had no place to put that awareness. No slot to fill, no knowledge.

"It's... Just a face, with horns, like on a bull. It's gold. I wonder if it's real." Adam reached for it.

"It is real. I'm wearing it. See?" Sam stuck out his tongue and cocked his head to the side.

"No, dummy. Real gold. I wonder if it's worth anything." Adam had many toys with glowing screens and tiny buttons and moving parts, and he was always breaking them and replacing them with newer models.

Sam didn't know the difference, but it was his collar, and he had always worn it. And so he always would.

"Give it to me," Adam demanded, holding out his hand.

Sam backed away as he had learned to do, more cautious than was his nature, than he wanted to be. Adam was not always nice. "It is mine."

"I just want to see it." Adam grabbed at the collar, pulling at it hard.

Sam thought he was wrong and shouldn't have done that - the collar had always been his, he didn't understand why Adam wanted it so badly. It was the only thing he owned, and everything else he would give. He had to move quickly to keep it to himself, and keep safe, some way to keep Adam away just this one time. "No!" he growled.

Then Adam was bleeding from his arm, screaming for John and running away from him before Sam could explain. He thought he would be able to explain, but not in front of his masters, with everyone watching him and yelling, and his eyes downcast and sad and his tail low and wagging for the slightest sign of forgiveness. He spent the night on the floor between the couch and the coffee table, considering his crime.

The next morning, Mary said something she had never said before, but what Sam had been waiting for a long time. "I was thinking we could go to the park today, Sam. What do you say?"

Sam wagged and wagged his tail. "Yes, oh yes! The park!" They had forgiven him after all.

*

"Here again, Kinky Dean?" The man called him by his proper name.

"Of course, yes!" Dean smiled at the manager of the Red Shoe Inn. It was one of his favorite places to work, with happy sounds passing through the walls and mirrors on the ceiling. And he lived in hotel rooms, worked in them too, so he knew the good from the bad. "A man's work is never done. And neither is mine," he added with a wink and a smile that flashed all of his white teeth.

He stopped in front of the dirty hallway mirror on the way. This had to be - he cocked his head, flashed his eyes to make sure every lash was just right - perfect. The dusting of freckles across the bridge of his nose and his cheeks had to make him look boyish enough, but still man enough to please. His hair had to be cut close, blond and just lightly frosted, but not enough to make it look like he cared. He was here to see a woman this time, and not a man. He tilted his head, and grew a day's worth of stubble. His shirt was thin but bleached white, his leather jacket shiny and scruffy enough to work. An old Foreigner rock ballad played through tiny hidden speakers inside his ears. Perfect. He walked through the door of Room 47.

"Ms. Milton. It's Dean, Kinky Dean, here to satisfy and ready to please." He bared his palms in one of his cockiest poses. "At your service."

But Ms. Milton did not reply right away. Dean was used to quick responses, or perhaps a customer in need of a little romantic seduction, a sense of foreplay, or realness. Once in awhile, a scream or a change of heart. He so rarely got nothing. He walked over to where she lay on the bed, face down and away from him, but she was cold and would not move. Dean placed a perfectly-shaped synthetic skin fingertip against the stain on the bed, and it came away cherry red with just a touch of chill. This was not good. No, this was not good at all.

Dean turned from the bed and walked out of the room very very quickly, in the opposite direction from where he'd come in. If he was lucky, he could get to the ends of the city before they found him.

*

"Oh, thank you! Thank you!" Sam wagged his tail the whole way to the park and sat in the passenger side of the car, staring out all sides of the glass dome windows, riding the streets to the outside of Lawrence.

Mary smiled a shy smile at him, and every time he saw it he licked her on the corners of her mouth then turned away with his head down, unable to contain his excitement. He knew that dogs long ago could ride with their heads hanging out the car windows, but he was content just to be here, with her. She was beautiful, and she would still pet Sam on the head absently, unlike John and Adam who wouldn't pay him any attention, though he tried so hard.

The park was so lovely! Green grass was so soft under his paws, and it smelled of everything - new smells, dog smells, birds with wings, little roly poly brown things with fluffy tails, old greasy food and rotting pizza, dried up dog messes, sweaty joggers, garbage piles - everything wonderful in the world. He let his tongue hang out and he didn't even care - he barked and didn't even care. The park was a carefree, golden, smelly place.

Mary threw him a ball - a ball! - red and shiny and he chased it again and again, sometimes running around the backs of strangers, digging under benches, running into the thickness of the trees, where the light was filled with colder air and shadows - and he always retrieved it and brought it back to Mary's feet, her shiny leather boots. They played all day, and he always found those sweet-smelling leather boots again.

Until he couldn't find them anywhere. The wind was blowing in with the darkness, and the smells were all jumbled up in his nose. He held the red ball in his teeth and then dropped it at his feet. "Mary? Mary!" He tried hard not to whine, but he wasn't used to being out alone, and he missed the rare touch of her hand in his fur, her soothing voice.

Sam wandered the park alone and it was getting dark. He used to have directions saved in his memory to find his way home again, in case he was lost, but when he tried to retrieve it, the information had been erased. A blank slot that had once been filled. He held onto the ball and started walking.

*

Silvery light outlined the gnarled twists of the trees and the forgotten beings that drifted below. Castiel knew the stars well, and the phases of the moon, which were important to him, though he had long forgotten why.

Castiel was used to nights such as these, but he dreaded them. The humans were on the hunt to destroy their demons, as they always had been for as long as the angels had been watching, but this time all of the angels and demons were gone. The only monsters left were the monsters the humans themselves created - the robots who were no longer servile, meaning useful. Some had broken down with half-mangled parts and busted sockets, others had run away, still others had gone truly rogue and turned against their masters in some unforeseen way. It every case, Castiel knew it ended badly - there were only so many humans, and so many used and outdated robots. What was found tonight would be taken away to be dropped into a vat of corrosive salt and acid. It would be much like burning alive, for any robot unlucky enough to feel. What was not found tonight would be found some other night, for the humans never stopped hunting what they feared. If Castiel knew anything, he knew this to be true. So, his forest had become a kind of purgatory, when no heaven or hell existed anymore. It was where he lived, abandoned by his Father and the rest of his brothers when the Apocalypse had been decided.

The garbage piled high into the trees, close to the branches where there were no leaves. Land was scarce in all the world but forgotten things still piled up in forgotten places such as these. What others did not want to remember, Castiel saw, and loved. It was his existence, and he hadn't asked why since the time of the Winchesters.

He watched the discarded and lost robots dig through the scrap pile with a feeling he'd long since recognized as pity. If he'd had something to offer, it would be mercy, but pity it was. They looked human after all, with a few parts misplaced - an open eye socket, a missing arm, a corroded belly - but they were more fragile than the privileged humans that remained, perfect and maintained as they were, and so he found, in the end, that he loved them more. They rooted around and reattached parts, proud of their self-sufficiency and utility. All beings loved a purpose.

Castiel kept at a distance from them until he saw her - a red-haired, freckled young woman with pale skin that glowed in the moonlight, her every part intact. She had a pair of wings, just like his but more compact and therefore practical-looking, like a fashion accessory instead of a deformity. Was she a new model of angel? Had the humans heard stories of heaven and longed for it again? She looked like --

But Castiel could not remember after all. "Excuse me. Excuse me? Miss -" He called to her, his voice underused and rough. He no longer had contact with his human host to give him signals on how to deal with other people - he had gone away, never to return, just like everyone else he had known. The winged girl was the closest he'd come to familiar in a very long time. "Miss! Wait!"

She startled for a moment, her wings twisting away and then towards him. "Me?" She whispered.

Castiel just nodded, daring to come closer. He had to see if she was like him, was anything like him. "I see your wings." He twisted his back. "I have them too."

She nodded back, unsure.

He knew he looked suspicious, some intact android mecha in a suit wandering the forest with a strange pair of wings. He could be a parts-stealer, or some citizen hire of the dangerous-eyed Mecha Police. "I'm not - one of those who would harm you. I -" He couldn't confess. "Are you an angel?"

Her wings shook a little with confusion, and he saw they were tattered and worn, patchy in places, and plastic; not much like his own at all. "No, I'm a fairytale mecha, of course. What's an angel?"

He ignored the fast sinking of his heart - surprised even that it could still sink, all this time so low - and pressed on. "How long have you had them?" He stopped his hand just above her wings.

"Um, I don't know," she was shaky, unsure. "A little while."

He knew his next question would sound even more suspicious, but he had to ask it. "Are they yours?"

"Of course they are! I got them when I was made. What do you think I am?" Mechas, for all that they lacked, still had a sense of pride.

"I apologize." He held up his hands, willing her to stay calm enough to help. "Whose are they?"

"Golden Calf's. Golden Calf Industries." Her eyes shifted from side to side, as if she felt fear, if she could have. She fingered the charm at her neck - a little golden head. She hissed, her words whispers, "Now leave me alone. I don't want any trouble."

"I don't mean to give you trouble," Castiel tried, but she was already stomping away to another pile of scrap metal beyond the hill. He could follow at a distance, or try. She didn't have to mean anything - parts were traded, bought and sold at every hour of the day, illegal or no. Golden Calf was a leader in the cybernetic industry, but that didn't mean they were doing it right; more likely it meant another leap forward in the systematic and slow destruction of the human and cyborg race, falling together faster than even the angels could fall. And angels could fall so very fast.

At least the fairytale mechas had a purpose - nannies for the only children of privileged couples, living in fine empty houses far away. They sang songs and told stories of make-believe, lulling babies into sleep.

He wouldn't want to do that. He much preferred to find treasure out here with the trash, where everything looked beautiful under the moonlight. It was difficult to be an angel with nothing to offer - without grace or answers or an intact memory. He listened, and sat quietly with the scavengers if they didn't want to talk, and mended the parts he could with his hands.

*

Dean ran until he could see the moon, past all of the neon lights of the city in Kansas City, and all the motels he would have called home. Missouri had been his home for as long as he'd had one, and he didn't know any different. The forest beyond the trees was scary, but that was where his kind went when they were lost and disgraced, and he was, he was. There would be no trial for him, nor pleading of his case. He was a love mecha, and well-known as one besides, but there was no community among them, for they all fought for the same prize - the attention of the humans, whose money they could not use and whose numbers were always dwindling - and he would have no sanctuary.

His client had been murdered by a human, Dean knew that much. Mechas were not programmed to kill, and he would not even know how to begin to try to harm someone, not truly. It wasn't in his programming; he was programmed to love - programmed to fuck, even, in all kinds of ways - but not to harm, rape, maim, or kill. Everyone knew not to accidentally say no in front of a love mecha - they would listen without fail, and hear no excuses. 'Stop' and 'Don't' and 'Please' were free words, but Dean's safe word was programmed to be simply 'No' and therefore he would follow it, like all his programming.

But robots were believed to have minds of their own, no matter how clear their enslavement was, for humans were superstitious and suspicious of them, even though they had been built by humans, been built to serve humans, and had no other reason to exist but to serve. There were no trials, no justice for mechas, for they had no will of their own and no need to survive for their own sake. Any mecha found unable to fulfill their role or found to be a threat was simply destroyed in melting pits of fire - publicly if their owners wished, privately if they belonged to the government or if they were of no interest. It was nothing to be upset about, Dean knew, and it had never troubled him before.

Though on this night, Dean found himself thinking about it very deeply. He had nowhere to run, he knew that. Neighboring Kansas was still a place of no sanctuary, despite the people from the flooded coast moving inwards to the dry plains and bringing their beliefs with them. Things had not changed so much for a love mecha to be free from the fears of humans. No, there was no where to go. So he ran all the way to Acheton, Kansas, to the forest there. He heard it was a forest of friendship, or had been, and included trees from all original 50 states and the Moon, where a seedling had once been taken and returned back to Earth. A forest of the Moon, imagine that? He tried, but it was hard to imagine what did not involve rope, and lube, and plastic parts.

The forest was left to seed and overgrown now - a man-made forest in the middle of the grass plains. Mechas whispered that fairies and angels lived there, somewhere under a grove of moon trees, but Dean didn't believe most of what his kind said. They were also full of superstition and suspicion, believing in make-believe because they were programmed to, because it was supposed to make them more docile, due to a mistaken belief that had persisted through human history for thousands of years and like so few things, would not die.

Dean followed the silvery Moon and hid in the shadows as best he could, running a fast pace at night and hiding with the garbage during the day, with other discarded things. Miles and miles he ran, and though he never grew tired, he wanted to rest very badly. Soon - though it had seemed very long - Dean followed the moonlight to where it lay over the tops of maple trees, reflecting their silver light back to them. The forest of friendship, it must be, and so he passed under the trees in search of other mechas like himself - even fairies or monsters - but not angels.

He seemed to walk a long time without finding anyone, and not even the animals hunted here after the witching hour. There were voices in the distance, muffled, but mecha-sounding to his ears. He thought he heard a woman, a few men, the snapping of branches and crushing of leaves, and so he walked towards them, after such a long time being alone.

It was too dark to see the dark suits clearly until he was among them, but floating in the middle of the circle of men was a pair of floating white wings - they looked like a dove flying in the air, but they were attached to a red-headed woman, her skin pale in the moonlight.

"Hey, I've been looking for -"

He spoke it too soon. For then Dean saw the black suits were uniforms, and the reason that he couldn't see the eyes of the men was because they were the oil-black eyes of the MPs - the Mecha Police - and he was indeed in big, big trouble.

At the sight of them, he could already smell acid and fire in his nostrils, the clink of chains lowering him over the pit of fire. His loneliness must have made him dumb, that was all he could think of to blame for walking into such a wolves' den after so much time spent avoiding just this. It was just his luck, and maybe he deserved no better, but Dean felt something overcome him that he'd never experienced before - like the wave of the ocean, taking him under, and making him want to cry out for help from those make-believe beings he wouldn't believe in if he wasn't programmed to.

"Help! Keep me safe!" He flung his body into the circle, trying to get across, and clung to the girl with wings. She shoved him towards the Police and ran in the opposite direction.

"Where you going, fairy?" A dark-suited man swung a metal club at her head as she tried to get free of the circle. It cut her flesh off the metal and revealed a face of chips and circuits. He continued to smash and smash at her until all the electricity that kept her going was lost. Fires flashed within her, and then she was gone.

Dean could do nothing but stare at the violence. He'd seen it before with the humankind, but he'd always sympathized with the perpetrators before, and never the rebellious mecha, which he was now. "Stop!" He yelled when he could finally speak. The hands around his biceps were tight and unyielding. "She's gone! She's stopped moving. You can stop now; she won't hurt you."

One of the men laughed - his face was long and ruddy, his hair light and slightly coiffed, and a dimple was set in the center of his chin. "We were never afraid of her, don't you worry." He smiled. "Besides, we got you to play with now, and you're a proper love doll, all eager to please, isn't that right?"

Dean wanted to say no, but he couldn't lie. He should have been afraid that the men wouldn't say no either, and he would have to comply, have to serve them in whatever way they wished. As an illegal, he had no protection under any laws of commerce; no one to worry if he was broken or unusable; no one to service him so he would keep making money for them.

But he felt no fear because he was not programmed to. He was theirs. In a way, it was no different. Nothing had changed.

The man holding onto his arms pushed down until Dean fell to his knees in the circle. He was so dirty, and his circuits needed oil, but they didn't seem to care about that. He felt them tear at his clothes until his T-shirt was crumpled and thrown in the dirt, his jeans pushed down his thighs. Thick fists grabbed his hair and fucked their bodies into his mouth, one after the other, and he moved his tongue as best he could like his programming told him to do, and he took them all as deep as he could, and he swallowed down what they gave him, as his programming told him to do. He felt nothing.

It took a long time for him to do his job, and since the men never said no, he couldn't stop on his own. He waited for them to finish, and looked up at the moon as it sank past the trees, and felt the sun rising at his back, the light stretching over the forest.

So when he saw the angel seem to appear out of nowhere at his shoulder, it was strange but also not-so-very-strange, as if the sun had sent him to Dean, if Dean believed in such things. He didn't know why he thought 'angel' and not 'fairy' - angels did not exist, while fairies were made every day. This angel's hands were strong as he shoved the man back and out of Dean's mouth and hair. His wings were more pristine than the girl-with-wings' had been, like they were made out of water-repellent plastic, and almost glowing in the sunlight.

Dean grabbed onto his legs - "Don't let go. Keep me safe! Don't let go!" he called, though he was the one holding on - and tripped the angel up for a moment. He was suddenly afraid - for the first time, afraid - under the gaze of this angel. It was a cool gaze, and weird, in so many ways weird. It made him bare - but hadn't he always been bare? Had never not been?

But then the angel looked at him with blue, blue eyes and laid his hands on Dean's face then, and so Dean let go of him.

It took only minutes to dispatch the men back into the edges of the forest and beyond, for this angel did not have to wait for a no at all, and he did not have to be programmed to fight in order to fight, and he had forgotten his programming altogether, though Dean didn't know that. He just watched him fight with fists that seemed to be made of steel; though he was not man, nothing else about the man seemed mecha to Dean, and Dean was programmed to know the difference between the two.

Dean tried to find his T-shirt in the dirt and pull up his jeans, finger the cracked leaves out of his hair before the angel returned to him, for he was programmed to look neat and presentable in all circumstances. He was failing in most respects, but he at least got his clothes back on. He should have been able to do better, to remake himself as new. This time, when he felt the angel's hand on his arm, he did not flinch because he was not afraid. The angel paused with his arm there.

"What - What is it?" Dean spoke and tried to stand, but the arm pressed him to stay.

"It's not safe." The angel's voice was so calm and silent-like, Dean had to narrow his eyes just to hear it. "Will you let me take care of the problem of your identification? I don't want them to return."

The flat, squared-looking hand rested flat on his identification badge where it was imprinted into his arm. He was surprised that he hadn't thought of it before - his skin badge was the only way to ID him apart from other mechas of his kind, and allow the humans to frame him, and he would not be safe as long as he still had it.

Dean nodded his head and so the angel burned his hand print into his arm over the badge, erasing it and leaving a red welt in its place. A red welt in the shape of his hand. They knelt there together on the ground.

"Thank you," Dean said when he found he could speak again.

The angel smiled. "You're welcome."

"What are you? Are you a fairy-tale nanny? I've heard of those."

"No. I'm different. A unique creature."

"Oh." That bare, irrational voice in his head was back, so strange. "But you're not human? And you're not like me?"

"I'm... close to human."

"Oh." Was all Dean said in reply.

*

*

They knelt together, beneath the trees. Dean shrugged, still looking shaken up, and Castiel longed to comfort him, but he had never been very good at that, even when Dean was alive.

Dean's skin a little green, a strange shade of pale, but freckled. Eyes so bright, hair spiky and never changing. Leather jacket worn and too shiny at the same time, like Dean himself. His mouth full and rounded into that perfect innocent O.

Oh, Dean. Dean. Castiel closed his eyes and silently prayed his name to heaven.

But why? Why would his Father do this to him? Why would his Father do anything. Castiel used to think he understood, all those thousands of years before Dean, but he never had. His Father had nothing to do with this. Dean once was, and then he was no more. Now, it came back around again. That was the closest he would ever come to a reason. It was because it - was. In the end, none of it had anything to do with him. Then why was he still here?

What are you? What are you? was what the look in Dean's eyes seemed to be asking.

It was so painful, and yet so *alive* to see Dean again. He had never seen another like him.

"I... I don't know how to thank you." He felt Dean's hand on the lapels of his coat, his fingertips brushing his tie. His breath came out in perfectly timed exhales, but his lips, his eyes, and everything Castiel remembered was right there again, imploring him in the same way Dean always had, but now, after all this time, Castiel finally understood what the question had been.

Castiel softly picked up Dean's hand by the wrist and placed it at his side. He changed the subject to something big enough to distract him. "Do you remember your parents, Dean?"

"How do you know my name? Oh, right - you've heard of my reputation, I bet." He looked down sheepishly. "I am rather famous."

He had never met another 'Kinky Dean' model, nor heard of him before, but he could not explain. "My name is Castiel."

"Okay. Castiel. I remember my mother, Castiel. Her name was Mary. She was beautiful, and strong, and she used to make me tomato and rice soup to eat and sing me ancient rock songs. She loved me very much, and she's proud of me when I do as I'm programmed to do."

Yes, Mary then. Dean loved her without reservations, without fail. Then it was settled - Dean was one of the mechas programmed to seem as human as possible, but he was not real. He was not _Dean_.

"And your father? Do you remember him?"

Dean shook his head hard from side to side. "No, no. I don't want to think about him."

Castiel watched Dean's eyes closely, looking for a reason. "But you remember a man who was your father?" This was strange. Mechas were programmed to feel loved.

"No, I don't remember him. I know I had a father who made me - that is all. How about you?" His eyes were still green, and they still shone when he was afraid.

"Yes. My father made me too. I don't know much about him either."

"Okay. How about your mother?"

"I never had a mother."

"Everyone has a mother." Dean's eyes narrowed. "So, you're not human then?"

"No. I already told you that I'm not."

"Come on, spill it. I know you just saved my life but you're sounding like someone who's never been made to take their pills before."

"I have not been made to take pills."

Kinky Dean rolled his eyes. "Well everyone is supposed to take pills. It makes them all normal." He shrugged again. "That explains a lot I guess. So what am I supposed to think? You're not human, you're not like me. So what are you?"

"I'm... something else. Just believe me - I'm not going to hurt you."

Dean sighed just like Dean. "Fine. Whatever. I believe you."

Castiel felt Dean's body relax against his side then, his head falling to the shoulder of a damp trench coat. He knew Dean was just following his programming, and taking contact and warmth where he could get it, but he couldn't fault him for it, when it was something Dean would have done with him on a night like this one, long long ago.

"You should look into those pills, you know," Dean yawned a programmed yawn, making him appear sleepy. "They make lots of different kinds."

Castiel took Dean's advice for what it was worth. He was afraid enough for pills, afraid of the creation falling into false rest and clutching his arm. They stayed quiet in the dark and waited for the sun to rise for they had no reason to sleep.

 

*

He had walked a very long way. All of the ground looked the same, all brown and dead, and the smells were faded, not fresh. He could smell the difference between mechas and humans, and all kinds of things in between, like real dogs who sometimes scared him, always feral they were and likely to be shot if found, since the only animals allowed to be kept were mecha animals like he was. He had been kept for a while. He'd had a good life with Mary and John and Adam. He'd tried his best.

If he could only get back to them, he would find a better way to explain, something less dumb than chasing after balls in the park and being excited by rides in the car. Sam would find it. He couldn't believe he'd been acting so stupid, instead of showing them how much he could do for them. He could fetch useful things, not slobber on their shoes, not mess up and get into things he shouldn't. He just needed a day - one day to show them - if he could just get back home.

But he wasn't used to being outside. Sam tried very hard to remember the way to the park, and how to trace the way back to the house, but none of it had made sense that first night in the dark. He didn't want to say, but it was scary to be all alone. At least if they left him alone in the house he knew where he was. He no longer knew that anymore. Strange things had happened since he first found the park. Maybe parks were bad; maybe he'd been mistaken about everything.

So he'd walked a very, very long way.

If he stayed close to the trees, it was harder for people and other scary things to find him. He could be alone with little furry things and chase them and have some fun, forget about his matted fur and loneliness for a while. There were so few trees and forests in the land he was traveling. It made him nervous. Maybe he was going the wrong way. Sam never found any people in the forests, and so he wished for more trees.

When he found the gnarled, overgrown forest, he started to wag his tail despite himself. There were no little furry things to chase, and no smells that he liked, but it was far from the houses and there were no other distractions. He thought he heard voices somewhere deep inside, and he started to trot off towards them, because they didn't seem particularly human or mecha, just voices. They were very far into the forest, though not far for as long as he'd been walking. One was funny-looking with white wings on his back like the flying things had; the other he couldn't recognize because there was a red mark where his ID was supposed to be. He jumped when he saw Sam, and Sam stopped when he noticed him, though he wanted nothing more than to run up to him and sniff his feet and hands. He wanted that more than anything.

And he was so excited, he couldn't stop from speaking. "Where's Mary? Can you help me find Adam? I have to find Adam. Are you taking me to Adam? Mary took me to the park. I need to get back to Mary and John's house."

The maybe-mecha smiled at him. "Hello. What's your name?"

"I am called Sam." Sam thought his smile was the warmest he'd seen in a very long time. "What is your name?"

"I'm Kinky Dean." Dean pointed to the winged thing beside him. "His name is Castiel. Hello, Sam."

"Hello, Kinky Dean." With the words, he imprinted his new friend into his memory. Pause. Name. Pause. Then he turned to the winged thing.

"Hello, Sam." The man called Castiel looked at him and tilted his head.

Sam tilted his head back. This was a strange man. "Hello, Castiel." Pause. Name. Pause. He crawled closer, wanting to touch them both with his nose, his tongue. They would be good and friendly to him, and not leave him in the park by accident.

"You are looking for a Mary, you said?" His new friend Castiel spoke.

Sam barked. He was listening! "Yes. My master's name is Mary Smith. She took me to the park."

Dean smiled even bigger. Sam liked Dean. "Mary was my mother's name too. I don't know her last name, but I know women! They sometimes ask for me by name. I know all about women. About as much as there is to know. No two are ever alike, and I know where most of them can be found."

"Where?" Oh where, oh where? He was so excited!

Dean scratched him behind his ears, in the best best place. "We must go to the cities! The cities of the East, on the coast where the machines are born. Places called Pittsburgh, and Atlanta. There, we will find all the women we need."

They sat down in the dried leaves and talked excitedly, like the best of friends.

*

Castiel listened to the strange logic of these machines, speaking with the voices of the only true friends he'd ever had. He found he'd lived so long without direction, he would give anything to follow a lost dog and an even more lost love doll. They spoke for a time about their plans, and Castiel thought that if Dean had a tail, it would be wagging too.

He hated to be the sensible one. "I know you want to travel, but it can be dangerous on foot. You're a fugitive, and Sam is in danger without his owner's information. It's not safe."

They both looked at him with openness and trust he didn't deserve. Neither probably had any sense of geography unless they had been programmed that way. "Well," Dean said. "Do you have a better way?"

"I don't know," Castiel found himself lying. It was also not fair to lie to two beings incapable of lying. Still, it was mostly true. He couldn't move mechas around in time and place with him. He could barely move himself anymore. Once, long ago, Castiel used to be incapable of lying. Then the world changed, and all that mattered afterwards, was Dean. "I'll find us a car." Finding a car would be close to impossible, and yet they would be in danger on the road without them. Kansas was one thing - the coast was somewhere he never dared go.

Dean nodded, unaware of any danger, and concerned himself with Sam's coat.

*

"Good boy. Good boy." Sam loved Dean's hands very much. They were so firm and warm and full of good things - care, kindness, the press of rough fingertips. Dean was made to pet him, Sam thought.

"How'd you end up here, Sam?"

Sam told the story that still confused him. But maybe his new masters could help him understand. He spoke of his earliest memories with John and Mary, and how he had tried to make them happy after Adam got sick. He spoke of his confusion when he'd stopped being able to make them happy, and how Adam got better and started acting strangely towards him. He spoke of the park, and Mary's strange disappearance, and how he couldn't find his way back without the microchip, and he watched Dean's face turn down and grow long.

He told them about the lost dogs he'd found on his way across the cold brown land, some of them with their mechanical legs exposed, or their metal ribs showing through their skin. He told them about the dark-eyed men in dark uniforms who'd tried to capture him to take him somewhere far away he didn't know where, and how he'd been able to escape when they were gone for too long, distracted by something he didn't know what.

Dean smiled a little smile at him and hugged him around the neck, and Sam decided that he liked Dean's hugs best so far.

The strange winged man had been sitting near them, and Dean spoke to him now. "So you can't take us anywhere?"

"I'm sorry. I can't." He looked at the ground.

"What good is an angel anyway?"

An angel? Is that what he was supposed to be? He barked. "What is an angel?"

"Useless, that's what." Dean looked down at the ground. Sam decided to stick his nose in Dean's chin, and maybe lick the side of his face a little.

Castiel spoke up. "I know where there is a car we can use."

"A car? But they're impossible to use without the right imprinting - you know that. Cars are imprinted for life, just like Sam here." Dean said, his arm still around Sam's neck.

"I know. This car is special, Dean. It knows you. At least, I think it does. It has to."

"You know that sounds crazy, right? I've never driven a car in my life."

"Trust me?" Sam could tell it was a question by the way Castiel asked it, the pinched-looking expression on his face. He looked back and forth from Castiel to Dean, unable to read the thing that was passing between them.

"Fine," Dean sighed. "Where is this miracle car?"

"Rapid City. In South Dakota. We'll have to go north."

Sam got up on all four legs and wagged his tail, let his tongue fall out. They were going on a trip! Suddenly, his legs no longer felt tired.

*

The land was cold and shivery and brushed with dead leaves and old memories. Yet it was the greatest resource in all the world, greater than water and machines and even man. This silent earth.

Dean put one foot in front of the other and followed orders, because that was what he was best at. It made him shiver sometimes, and it made him cold, and it made him the kind of feeling he sometimes thought might be sadness, but sadness was a liability in his existence, and he didn't have time for it. He'd been created to love - what could possibly be better? Nothing, that's what.

He was Kinky Dean and Dean loved all things, no matter how many times he'd been used in the wrong way, or been confused by all that the humans asked of him, or wondered secretly at the future, and where he might end up when he was no longer useful. It wasn't his job to worry about such things. He was supposed to look good and smile and do all that he could to keep others happy.

So it was very strange to have to deal with this angel who'd found him in the forest. He hoped he didn't do the wrong thing by letting him stop the police and agreeing to go with him. After all, he was supposed to do whatever men and women asked of him, and he had to take the blame for the death of his client, whether he was responsible or not. That's what his kind did. It just made the world work better. It was the order of things. Some were meant to lead, and some were meant to serve, and Dean was definitely meant to serve.

Right now, what he wanted was a clothes upgrade and a mirror to look at his reflection and make sure his hair was straight, his skin wasn't damaged, he looked good and clean and proper. He wanted to find the first human who crossed their path and beg them to take Dean with them somewhere back where it was safe. Maybe there was no such thing. Maybe the world wasn't safe, no matter where Dean was or what he was, and his strange companions were the closest he would ever get to safety, and purpose, and sanity, ever again.

They walked through most of the day and into the night over empty grasslands, past tiny farmhouses, and saw only designer livestock, lone electric cars, black birds high in the sky above them. Shortly before dawn, they stopped to rest in a deserted barn, the hay poking Dean in the back as he hugged Sam close to his side. He touched Castiel with his right hand and the angel shivered, lost in dreams or pretending to sleep, Dean couldn't tell. He closed his eyes and pretended to sleep; for once, he wished that he could. He wanted to see what Castiel dreamed about, to see if any of this was worth trusting, and maybe figure out what the angel wanted from him. For everyone wanted something, and Castiel was no different - in fact, Castiel seemed to want something more desperately than anyone Dean had ever met, and he hoped that he would be able to give it to him. He was afraid to learn what would happen if he couldn't; if his face grew ever more sad and desperate, if Dean would never be able to make it better.

Sam was a much more comforting companion, warm and soft and resting halfway on Dean's chest. It was worthwhile to pretend happiness for Sam's sake, and it was all that he could do right now. Sam growled a little in his sleep and pressed the length of his face against Dean's chest. Dean just held him tighter and tried to keep his eyes closed, but it was no use.

"Castiel? You awake?"

The angel answered just as he knew he would.

"Will you tell me why you think I can get this car to run? You know, before I let you lead us further into nowhere." Dean waited for Castiel to answer, though he didn't doubt that he would. They continued to stare at the ceiling, but they would wait for each other because they had no one else to wait for.

"The car was old even when I first touched it, but it was maintained through the years. The man I knew who owned it was given the car by his father. Until, one day, the son could no longer drive it either, and he left it at the house of an old friend."

"Does it even run?"

"I doubt it's been driven for over a hundred years."

"Are you serious?"

Castiel shrugged beside him. "Very little about the story this car was a part of makes any sense. I do know the technology exists to fix the car. I think, if anyone is able to drive it, you can."

"Why? Why me?"

"It belonged to a man named Dean Winchester, who had a mother named Mary, and a father named John, and a brother he loved he called Sammy."

Sam perked up his ears and Dean felt his heart beat faster, his throat go dry, heat spread across his ears, just like he was programmed to feel, but he listened too. He listened to Castiel tell a story about himself, but more importantly this family of Winchesters, and two brothers whose love went beyond heaven or hell or any monsters of the earth. He listened past the dawn as Castiel told him a story about the Dean he remembered, the Dean that looked just like him, had so many of the same memories, and whom Castiel was so clearly in love with, despite the passage of years and all sense and memory, the man whom Castiel still loved.


	2. Chapter 2

*

The next day was cold and overcast with gray, and Castiel felt wrapped up in it like a cloak of fog and sadness across this empty plain. He shouldn't have mentioned the other Dean, no, he shouldn't have done that at all. Now this mecha doppelganger he saved will never stop wanting to know more, will never stop asking questions, or leave him alone, ever. He got himself in deeper than he ever wanted to, and he listened to Dean ask questions, but his face was like a disinterested child's - blank and faraway.

"What happened to the Winchesters?"

Castiel couldn't remember exactly. "They died, when everyone died."

Dean shrugged. "Your Dean should have had a mother like Mary."

"Mothers can't keep everyone safe, Dean."

"Of course they can. My mother was the best. You'll see."

"Where is your mother now, Dean? Why isn't she with you?"

Dean's tone was condescending. "I had to go to work, silly."

"Your mother would have liked your job?"

"Of course! I made people happy. Everyone needs love."

Castiel supposed angels could get along without it.

He might have found Dean's combination of bravado and denial comforting, because it was familiar, and because it was Dean. But this Dean could never know that, and it was a kind of torture to be so close to him every day, to remind him by the strange sheen of his skin, the unchanging energy, that this was not Dean.

They walked across Kansas towards South Dakota, never resting again, never sleeping. They all had reasons to shiver, Castiel supposed, when they passed old unkempt graveyards with gray crumbling stones. Sam barked at shadows and howled until Dean shushed him. Castiel felt Dean's hand grab onto his as they passed.

Dean dared to point for a brief moment at white stones that sprouted wings, praying hands. "Those statues - they look like you."

"I know."

"What do they do? Watch over the dead?"

Castiel thought over Dean's simple words for a moment, his mouth opening to explain to Dean just what it was angels were supposed to do, but - Dean was right. He was an angel, and he watched over the dead. In the turning of the world both lost and predetermined, what else was there for him to do? He had long ago given up on the living. "Yes. That is what they do. And that is what I do, so then that is what I am - an angel."

"Why do angels have birds' wings?"

His smile was rueful, he knew, and sad. It was familiar. "They were once symbolic and real. I had the grace of God, and wings to fly on that grace. Now, all I have left is the wings." Castiel rustled them, just to show he could, but Sam got anxious and restless at the familiar sight on such an unfamiliar bird, and started pacing in half-circles.

"I don't like that. Don't do that," the dog said.

"I'm sorry, Sam."

"Yeah. It's kind of weird," Dean backed Sam up, as he had been habitually doing for days. "Who ever saw wings on a person before? And since when did anyone besides mechas believe in gods? We only do because we were programmed to, and I'm not sure what all my programming is good for anymore. God didn't create me, and I'm way more useful than you so far."

Once again, Castiel couldn't find the words to argue with Dean, so he just mimicked his careless shrug.

"That's okay, angel. I don't care if you don't know what you are. I guess that just means you belong with us. Right, Sam?"

Sam just barked softly, and seeked out a hand to pet him.

Castiel obliged him. "Yes. Yes, I do."

*

They arrived at the salvage yard after days. All was dust-colored, dust-covered, in shades of rust. The cars here were models so old, Dean barely recognized them at first. Rectangles of rust, topped with boxes of rust. "People used to drive these things? What were they, nuts?" The past was weird - Dean knew that. People used to keep as many children and pets as they wanted, live the kind of life they wanted, and they didn't think about the shrinking world or the ethics of drinking water, breathing air. They just lived.

Dean stared at the burnt up ball of metal in the salvage yard outside of the place Castiel had called 'Bobby's'. Castiel had called it 'Impala' - no, THE Impala. Like that was supposed to mean something. "You're kidding me, right? This used to be a car?" He ran his hands over the hollowed-out shell. He saw fires burning, metal melting, power like an avalanche, broken glass. He pulled his hand away as if burned. It spoke to him in the language of machines.

"Wait," Dean said. "I can fix it."

From where he stood, his face in profile, Castiel narrowed his eyes. "I thought you could."

Later, they joined Sam where he waited on the porch and stared at the sun as it crawled towards the horizon, all sharing an unspoken sense of deja vu. It wasn't so strange - their programming was prone to these kind of glitches, where unplaced moments seemed to repeat themselves, and experiences sometimes played as if seen on a movie screen.

Sam roamed across the wooden floor throughout the evening. "I like this house." His tail wagged. He stopped at the dusty shelves that lined the walls. "What do all of these books mean?"

They looked at the books with their strange symbols and ancient languages with wide eyes. Sometimes Castiel thought he saw shadows pass over their faces, as if remembering. They looked on silently long into the evening.

Inside the living room, Sam loped in a circle and curled up on a faded couch. When Dean got tired of thinking, he joined Sam and they achieved something close to sleep for the first time, because they were something close to home.

*

The next day, Castiel began to admit to his own frail conscience that he had only wanted to give Dean something to keep him occupied, and near. Dean had been right last night - the car was a means to an end, but one that had no ending and offered no answers, no hope. Nothing ever had.

Still, it was hard to keep from staring at Dean, even when he had made him sit on the porch steps, his forearms resting on his knees and his hands clasped in front of him. Magic was happening. The same nanobots Dean used to change the cut and color of his hair, to add or remove freckles, make his clothes worn or shiny, to repair his complex body, were traveling back and forth between his synthetic skin and the newly mirrored chrome of the Impala, changing the very fabric of the matter they touched, and trading memories faster than light.

Dean plugged himself into the car and learned a strange history that shone on his face like a blank kind of wonder. Castiel stared and marveled at what defied his expectations, where he was only just realizing how many expectations he had been holding onto during their journey here, the desire to make the sadness of the past reappear anew, if this could be called desire. Dean stood with the hood of the car open above him, his hand reaching deep inside the guts of the thing he had so loved (this thing Dean had loved, if things could hold love like burned oil and worn parts) and stared at nothing with his mouth agape.

What was he seeing behind his eyes? Castiel wondered. Could he see the road stretched out before him over the top of the wheel, his hands tapping out a song he'd never heard before played from a plastic tape? Could he see black eyed demons running in the taillights, his human brother next to him aiming a shotgun? Could he see his father's eyes in the rear view mirror? The body of a naked angel stretched out on the backseat? The headlights of a semi blinding him before impact?

If so, Dean didn't tell him. Not yet. He just swaggered across the yard at the end of the day - his gait newly bowlegged, his skin matte with dust - and offered his nano-healed shoulder to him. "I'm gonna need you to burn me again," was all he said.

Castiel felt the slickness of the ID under his palm and burned it away for the second time, thinking this was what making Dean Winchester must have felt for his Father, thinking this was what it felt like when he raised Dean from Hell, the intimate holy feeling of his wholly naked body, needing only to burn under his hand and raise again.

*

Fixing the car was a different kind of work. Physical still, but with a finished product at the end besides a softening sex, a mess to clean up. Instead of the never-ending sine wave that was fucking, it was the wholly alien feeling of something growing into solidity. Growing real beneath his hands.

But it was a kind of fucking - Dean knew all kinds. This old machine spoke to him of what it needed and Dean gave what he could, the trading of cells more intimate than playacting. The machine paid him back in creaking metallic groans from its belly, staccato static whines from the radio, dried up pools of grease breathing out fumes. He knew women, and the curved rim that arched over the wheel gave a heated purr against his skin, and he knew that too. The further he reached inside, his whole body stretched out under the hood, the more he knew. He grabbed on, shook with it, and they groaned together. Machines, they spoke a language more intimate than fucking.

Though the angel-thing was something beyond him. He had taken him across whole states just to bring him here, and now he just watched him from the porch all day, his hands clasped in a kind of prayer, those fake-looking wings attached to his back. He had never met anyone so easy to seduce, and so difficult.

That was what he was doing - after all, he was Kinky Dean. It was the only thing he could figure out to do, with the messages from this car beneath his skin, the never-ending strangeness of this place. Dean began to seduce Castiel slowly, and all he had to do was listen to the shadow of his image in those messages. Maybe it was his programming, a safety valve imprinted on all love mechas that told him that Castiel could save him from those visions, and all he had to do was ask him, in the countless ways he knew how to ask, with his eyes, his walk, his tongue.

Things like walking into the kitchen where Castiel sat reading books with Sam. He leaned against the counter, crossed his legs at the ankle.

Sam's tail was wagging against the back of the chair he sat in. "Castiel was right, Dean," he said breathless, almost panting. "Angels are real. They are! We found them!"

"In the books, he means," Castiel kept his voice calm, always calm. But Dean could feel his eyes even when they weren't on him. He could feel everything he wasn't doing, all the time. "They don't talk about what happened to them, only that they existed once."

"I knew it!" Sam so loved the angels, though Dean knew he had nightmares about their careless eyes, the mighty beat of wings.

"You did, huh?" It was too easy to roll his tongue against the inside of his cheek. "Have you met another angel?"

"No," Sam turned around to face him on all fours. "I just believe him. The world is too beautiful, and he has birds' wings. So I believe him."

Dean didn't know about all that. Still, he had the urge to dirty the so-called angel sometimes just to clean him up, make him press his hands into the guts of the car just to mimic what he had been feeling. He began to walk the floor naked in between dreamless sleep, though he never needed to sleep.

*

This house smelled like dust, not food. Too many old smells, people long gone - not for miles around - no animals except for the black birds sometimes, sharp and shiny and boring.

Sam sat beside the car and saw the flashes between the machinery and Dean - Dean's machinery - and watching was like old, familiar smells. The flashes were things he knew about, had even seemed to live before, just like the symbols in the books and the pictures of things Castiel called angels. It was as if mentioning them would break a spell, and though he could speak as well as any living human or mecha, he found he didn't want to. The images tumbling into Dean now were his to decipher, and though Sam knew them just as well, he couldn't do that for Dean. What Sam was was not the boy in the flashes, the boy in the car. No, Sam was John and Mary and Adam's dog, and that was where he wanted to belong. Some safe place like home.

He read the books when Dean shooed him away, too confused to think. He learned to pull the books from the wall with his paws, turn the pages with his tongue, and could stare at the words - ancient, Latin, Enochian - and they spoke of things long lost, like Heaven, Hell and God. The lost things didn't matter - Had they ever? - but they held a beauty and a sadness that the humans still held that only he could see. Sam saw it when he looked at them, the way he could hurt them, or bite them with his teeth, or break their bones, that they didn't have any memory of. The natural world only the unnatural things remembered.

Sam knew he would find the angel where the angel always was - watching Dean. He pushed his head under Castiel's palm and rested on the porch. Castiel would look at him then.

"What do you need, Sam? What can I do for you?"

The angel saw, the angel saw the natural things, even if he didn't want to. He might have wanted to, once. Sam could almost remember that - how no one wanted to see the real world more. "I thank you for the books. I do! I like them. Can I ask you - Can I ask you for a computer? Oh I so want a computer, with a network and keys, someone to talk to. Please? Will you find me one? Will you?"

Castiel smiled. It made Sam want to shake his head. "I will get one for you, Sam. Don't worry. Alright." He scratched with his clawless fingers. It felt good. Soft and good. "Alright," he said.

*

It was dumbfounding the way the world would change. Castiel remembered the first time he saw the world from Heaven, the first time he looked through human eyes, the way it had looked after Dean, then close after the Apocalypse, the end. He'd seen it so many different ways and he never could get a grasp. The world was overwhelming, for he who used to know Heaven, once.

He stood in front of the Tech World store and ignored the automatic doors opening and closing. These were strange people on their shrinking island - always had been. Seas rose ever higher, whole nations collapsed, wars raged in faraway lands they had never even heard of less acknowledged, while they raced like trapped mice into big box stores to buy the biggest smallest screens, ever-shrinking phones he still didn't understand.

Young people in wire-frame glasses and polo shirts greeted him when he finally walked through the doors, and the rows of fluorescent lights made the plastic on the shelves seem shiny and new. Families bought devices to say 'I love you' and screens to plaster the walls of their homes with video games to practice shooting things, and somewhere across the world whole countries were drowning, but this was the way the world had been made, and this was the way his Father and brothers had left it, and this was the world Dean left fighting for, though he hadn't lived to see it fall under the water.

He was here to buy a computer for the dog that he loved so that he could find his missing family. So that was what he was going to do.

"Excuse me," he asked the first polo shirt he could find. "I need to buy a laptop."

The worker barely acknowledged him, looked around for someone else to take care of this. "Uh, do you need a mind interface with that? Because my buddy Mike can help you with that."

Castiel creased his brow, tried to ponder the meaning of a 'mind interface' but figured Sam would know more about it than he did. Sam always had. "Yes. Yes, I do." And because he guessed he might need one, after all these years, "And a phone."

New technology for spoiled people, a cell phone for an angel, and a mind interface for a dog. The world was too strange a thing to ever judge outright.

*

"Oh yes! Yes yes yes!" Sam wagged his tail and stepped from paw to paw in front of the box. He watched, tongue lolling, as Dean gave the angel-thing a kiss on the face. He wanted to join in, so he just licked Castiel's hand and fingers, which tasted like nothing else. "Thank you thank you!"

"The man at the store said it had mind interface technology." Castiel watched Dean open the box.

Sam watched too. It was too exciting - a new computer, a way to find Mary and John and Adam, a way to be seen as more than just a dog. Though he liked being a dog, he did, it's just that everyone came with expectations, and he felt he was much more than a dog, and it was hard to make them see that, he was a dog and more than a dog, and always had been.

Dean pressed the button and Sam stood with his head cocked in the halo of light the machine gave off, and he barked at it, and waited for it to acknowledge him, and when it did, it would do anything he asked of it. If he thought of a place, it would show him that place using far-off satellites. If he wanted a friend, it would display options of smiling faces, costumed faces, body parts saying hello, emoticons beamed in from other minds.

So Sam looked first for information on a missing dog search, and found nothing. He looked for his old address - a place to match Mary and John Smith. There were many Smiths, though not as much as there used to be, and though it took him awhile, he could scour the satellite images with his memories, and find it. There. There - Mary and John Smith, Lawrence, Kansas. Kansas!

Sam kept pacing in place, turning his head towards the machine, towards Castiel and Dean and away again. "I don't have a phone," he said, and whined just a little through his nose. He would not worry, he would not be scared.

The angel-thing held up his hand. "I have one. I thought you both might want it."

"Will you call for me?" Sam asked. It was all he could ask, though he felt he'd been given so much.

Castiel tried. He reached a woman and her husband, talking from somewhere behind her. They denied ever owning a dog. They lied and hung up the phone.

Sam frowned. He spent the rest of the night in Dean's lap and Dean never stopped stroking his fur. Dean told him he could use the computer to find people to talk to. People who wouldn't judge him or leave him. Sam licked his nose, because he liked Dean. Because Dean said the right thing, he tried, but it still wasn't enough.

*

The car was almost done - Dean stuck his hands deep inside the guts of it, laid across the seats and pressed his fingers to the radio, saw a baby in the backseat, two brothers grow into the front seat, a father there and gone and back again, crash after crash after crash, races along highways with trucks, zombie hordes, madmen with fire.

He understood none of it. But that was nothing new, wasn't it? He wasn't built to know, much less question. He was built to get things working and parts lubed up, moving, cease again. He placed his hands upon it and the glass windows joined together to make a dome, the chrome on the bumpers narrowed at the back and curved in the front, the steel turned to titanium. Now THAT was a car he knew. Castiel had called it an Impala.

He was always a mechanic - nothing new there. But for once he was grateful to the machine.

Dean wanted to thank Castiel at night, too, but for what exactly he couldn't name. He didn't know where they were going, only the old familiar running away that shouldn't be so familiar, and yet was.

So Dean thanked him in other ways. The car running in idle in the yard, he played a soft alt-country waltz out of his ears loud enough for Castiel and Sam to hear. "Dance with me?" He held his arms out, for he knew all dances, the steps, the counts.

Dean spun him around slower than the music, feeling Castiel's overwhelmed and nervous feelings before he did himself, kicking up the dead leaves under the oak tree, letting Sam bark and run around them all.

They laid on the grass under the trees and watched the birds Sam spied and chased. Dean let the waltz play and didn't stare at Castiel beside him but felt him just the same, and wondered if he already knew about the images in his head from the car, which he felt just as strongly as if he had remembered them himself, though he did not.

*

The love mecha and his dog sat under the blue halo of light in their shared rapture, shared heaven. Sam shared his computer with Dean, the interface taking them both on as one, together, which would have been unheard of, and yet here it was, Dean thought, and so then it was heard of, wasn't it?

Dean looked up to find Castiel on the couch. "I know where we can find your brothers! It says right here -" and Sam barked too "- the City of Brotherly Love!"

"What?" Castiel sat up and cocked his head like he had started to do more and more. It was something else that Dean remembered about him, if those memories could be real, which of course they weren't.

"Think about it!" Dean felt as excited as Sam's wagging tail. "You said there used to be libraries on the coast, right? Before they moved them inland. This city - Philadelphia - is on the coast now, so couldn't they have moved the libraries there?"

"Yes. I suppose so -"

"We looked up Sam's collar - Golden Calf Industries - but we couldn't find anything else about it. Sam thinks - tell him, Sam."

"If Golden Calf made me," he spoke, "then maybe they could fix me. If we asked they could fix me and John and Mary would let me stay with them again." Sam's tail wagged.

"We could help Sam. And the libraries could tell us more - about what happened to your brothers. It's fate!"

"But you don't believe in fate, Dean."

"Okay, fine, but these brothers of yours - the ones with their memories stored in the car - they were in love, right?"

"Yes. They were."

"Then that's what we're looking for - brothers in love. And this is the city of brotherly love, and in the center of it there's a park called Love Park -" Sam barked over Dean again.

"I don't know, Dean."

Castiel looked something like frightened, but he couldn't be, right? Dean knew this was something to try. There was nothing else left to try, was there? Where else would they go?

"Maybe we'll go then," Dean said. "Maybe we can get along without you."

He let his hope die down and wane and shrink and flutter to sleep, like Sam's wagging tail. They looked at the screen together, their shared minds racing through everything brotherly and hopeful and impossible.

*

Hours passed. Castiel had let Sam and Dean sleep with him on the bed, though he wasn't sure if what they did was sleep at all, or some facsimile of it, like much of what they did in their strange pioneering new-found lives.

Dean had kissed him goodnight and held his head, smiling. Castiel remembered trying to breathe then, feeling horribly guilty (that first feeling he remembered having so long ago once) - he'd just wanted to keep Dean near to him, and now he failed at even the most selfish of tasks. Dean was going to leave, and take Sam with him, and they would be lost and he would never find them again.

Castiel was pained by Dean's simpleness and innocence. Why did he have to have hope? Why this Dean? Why now?

And why had he found that false angel in the forest, the one who had told him about Golden Calf Industries? Why did Sam have to have the same collar, the same build-place?

He knew at least that Golden Calf wasn't in Philadelphia. They could still go there and Dean might never find the place. He would have them for a little while longer. It all didn't have to fall apart so quickly. Not this time. There was always hope. He used to try to believe that.

"Can we stay here tonight? With you?" Dean had asked, and of course, always, he had said yes.

"But I don't sleep," he had warned Dean.

"We don't have to sleep," Dean shrugged, and then kissed him. The three of them on the bed, like never before, not even the first time. Dean clung close to Castiel, who held him, and stayed.

Hours passed. Sam went back to his computer, ever sleepless.

Dean touched Castiel's chest with his palm. "Do you feel anything? I feel something."

"Don't."

"Castiel -"

"Don't."

"Angel -"

"Dean. I'm not meant for... this." He at least didn't remove Dean's hand. At least.

"Well. I am." He felt Dean's hands begin undoing the buttons down the front, his mechanical hands slide beneath the cotton of his undershirt. He breathed while they stayed there, this head and hand on his chest.

"Okay," Dean said. Okay. They would go together, he knew then they would go.

The night before, Dean had plugged the car into a power outlet, rebuilding miles worth of wires in the process. In the morning, Castiel rode shotgun and listened to Dean whoop and felt drops from Sam's tongue land unnoticed on the collar of his coat and felt the wetness on his face only after he had started to cry.

"See, you have feelings," Dean insisted in a triumphantly Dean kind of way.

"I do," Castiel said. "I do."

Their last night in the bed, Dean moved his hands under Castiel's shirt again, kissed his face, neck, and chest as much as he would allow. Undid his pants.

"You're just like me," Dean said, before taking Castiel into his mouth soft, rolling his balls between his fingers, playing with his still-soft cock expertly.

Castiel felt something break a little then, growing hard enough to fill up Dean's mouth, listening to Dean's voice in between strokes - "that's better, that's good, that's it" - moaning moaning moaning and humming.

He started to feel more and Dean didn't stop, but it was moving so slow in him, like Castiel didn't know how to feel any more, and then he did, and he was moving closer to something he couldn't name, but so slowly, slowly. Dean didn't stop because he didn't need to, he could go on and on while Castiel felt his breath quicken slightly, just now taking deep breaths down to his belly, but hitching somewhere in between.

Castiel felt the moon move in the sky and the shadows in the room change and Dean's mouth working on his cock and the room slowly shifting over the hours as they passed. Feeling as much as he could and it was almost, almost, too much. He stopped Dean when the sun broke through and bathed the clouds in light.

Later, they left Bobby's and headed East, to the cities.

Dean looked thoughtful and amused and confused and kept looking over at Castiel like he'd never seen anyone like him before.

"You're new," Dean said.

"I know," Castiel frowned.

"No, I mean, that's good. It's good, Cas."

He cocked his head. "What did you just call me?"

"Cas? Castiel?"

"Why did you just call me 'Cas'?"

Dean furrowed his brow and frowned as much as he ever did. "I don't know. A nickname?"

Castiel thought hard for several minutes. This seemed important. Even beyond last night, this was something bigger than he could name right now.

"Do you like it?"

Castiel sighed. "Yes, I think I do."

For some reason, Dean and Sam simultaneously agreed to eat at a diner when they crossed the border of Iowa. The worst, best kind of diner, with plastic gingham tablecloths and dusty venetian blinds and everything covered with the sheen of old grease. Dean ordered burgers to go and came outside with them, running.

"Let's stay at a hotel, hide out for awhile," Dean said, speeding to the most run-down one he could find.

Castiel stated the obvious. "We don't need to eat or sleep." He looked at the road behind them. "What's the hurry?"

Dean shrugged. "I'm used to hotels. I kind of miss them."

"What's the real reason?"

"They wouldn't accept my form of payment." He shrugged again. "I'll have better luck at a hotel."

The thought had never occurred to Castiel. Dean had offered to pay his usual way - however the management wanted him. But they were on the run from the law to begin with, and so they ran some more.

Castiel drank his vanilla milkshake through a straw. "Did you live in hotels when you worked?"

"Sure - where else would I work? The best business could always be found at hotels. Churches were good too, but they are very hard to find. The ones who made us are always looking for the ones that made them. They go in, look around their feet, sing songs, and when they come out, it's usually me they find. I've picked up a lot of business in front of churches. Hotels, too. And I know how to get free stuff from the vending machines."

The hotel they found was the worst, best kind of hotel, with scratchy floral-patterned bedspreads, broken ceiling fans, and spotted wallpaper. Dean adored it.

*

Dean made the night safe by making it familiar. He ground the skin from his chest, his belly, his hips down on Castiel. "Last night, it wasn't enough, was it? You need more. I can give you more." He attacked Castiel's body with his mouth, his hands, the weight of his body. It was too much, all at once, but Dean missed giving it.

"No," Castiel moaned beneath him, "I can't. I'm an angel."

Dean stopped, stricken. Castiel had said no.

*

Castiel had regretted it as soon as he'd said it. He wasn't used to these mecha lovers, their programmed rules. He watched Dean move to the other bed and hug Sam close from where he had been watching there. Dean had closed his eyes and pretended to sleep, or slept, Castiel could never tell. Sam put his head down on the curve of Dean's side and looked at Castiel. He sighed one long doggy sigh and then shut his eyes as well.

Dean was naked on the bed, the curve of his back and cheeks rounded in the moonlight. The whole night Castiel tried not to stare at him, and he failed. He had too much time to work on his apology, staring at Dean.

When it finally came out, it seemed dumb even to his own untrained ears.

"I don't know why I don't want you."

"What?" Dean huffed out a flimsy laugh at him. "That doesn't even make sense."

Castiel wanted to give up. "I know?"

"What is there to be afraid of? What is so wrong to want?"

Everything, Castiel thought. "Nothing," he said.

Dean shrugged. "All I'm asking is for you to be with me, because it's what I am."

"Are you sure?"

Dean moved to the other bed. "Look - maybe, last night, that's not exactly what you wanted. But I bet there's something else that you do want. I'm really good," he spoke between kisses, "at finding out."

Dean still hadn't put his clothes on. Maybe he knew more than Castiel thought. Castiel's thoughts went back to the last days when the angels had been choosing, and every choice had seemed wrong. It was wearing him down, though to what exactly he couldn't fathom.

*

He watched Dean watching the television with Sam all morning, his pale round too-perfect ass turned up on the bed, and when he couldn't move anymore, Castiel fell to his knees beside the bed and started to pray. His hair almost touched Dean's hip he was so close. But he couldn't, he couldn't do what? And he hadn't prayed in so very, very long. He'd been afraid to, in case he heard nothing still.

"Cas, Cas." He felt Dean try to lift his head up. "It's okay, you don't have to do this. I'm right here, Cas. Castiel."

But he refused to move. He felt Sam try to nudge him with his nose and whine a little. "Castiel? Castiel?" He said his name so fast it was like one sound. Castiel could hear the frown in his voice.

He finally let Dean lift his head to face him from between his knees, crumpled by the side of the bed, and his expression was so innocent that Castiel could almost ignore that his face was inches away from Dean's ready semi-hardness and the nest of his hair. "Dean -" And every argument left him.

When he opened his eyes, he saw Dean lick his lips, take one of Castiel's hands and place it on the top of the cheek of his ass, high up at the small of his back, and press his fingers into the curves. He let Dean guide his head forward towards his cock, hard on command, and he managed to do the rest, taking Dean into his mouth and sucking for dear life. He moved his other hand to Dean's other cheek and pressed him in up to his mouth, as close and in as far as he would go.

He didn't break, he didn't even change. Worship, worship - that was all Castiel had wanted. Dean called out in high pitched sounds, yelps and keens, as Castiel mimicked all of his moves from the last night at the salvage yard, but more, and more, not treating Dean like anything new or virginal (though he was both to him), just taking all of him and not letting go. Through his eyelashes, he watched Dean arch his back and let his elbows fall to the bed, the shadows moving across perfect skin, and Castiel shoved his body towards his mouth, all suction and swallowing.

Dean screwed his eyes shut. "Do you want me to come? Do you want me to come?" He almost pleaded in between gasps.

Castiel's mouth was silent, but said nothing but no, silently so it didn't matter.

Dean fell back on the bed completely, his arms collapsing, and Castiel just pulled him closer, eyes raking over his body. His ass was entirely in Castiel's hands now, his cock wholly in his mouth, his legs bent and curled all the way to his toes as the angel jerked him with fast little strokes of his throat. He couldn't come if Castiel didn't want him to, and Castiel showed no signs of slowing. "Please, please, please," Dean begged, and Castiel knew he was beyond caring what he sounded like. His whole body was shaking with the need to release but he couldn't lose a drop if Castiel didn't say so. He'd been figuring out the rules.

He moved his right hand to cup Dean's ass lower, and in, swirling a finger until he found the spot where his mechanically lubed puckered hole kissed the tip, and he pressed in slowly, swirling in deeper down to the second knuckle, circled his finger around and felt the synthetic skin take and give. He circled in slowly, so slowly, and never stopped sucking. Dean grabbed a handful of his hair and pulled hard, but he just messed it up, and Castiel sucked harder, and began a second finger. He watched Dean's eyes water with the strain and the tears fall when he could lift his head up, and he didn't know how much any of this was programmed and how much might have been anything like real, but it was as real as he would ever get, and it was Dean and every bit of him programmed for pleasure.

"Please, please," Dean begged, and it was so easy to find the sweet spot on love mechas, synthetic and hard and jutting out easy against his fingers, and rub the pads of his fingers past it in little thrusts, and when Dean screamed next Castiel screamed too around the dick in his mouth, loud enough for Dean to understand, "Yes" - because his main kink had always been mercy.

Dean's whole body tensed and stilled, and he poured hot and sweet into Castiel's mouth, and if Castiel had had anything to compare it to, he would have thought it perhaps too sweet instead of salty, too soft instead of bitter, but Castiel didn't, so he thought it was just perfect, and tasted as much as he could before swallowing it down.

Castiel finally moved off him then, and kneeled there panting and watching as Dean pulled himself through the phases of recovery which he didn't need, and the slow regulation of his breathing and opening of his eyes which he also didn't need, and he felt that he should be exhausted himself but he wasn't, not at all. He just wanted to give the mechanical love robot enough pleasure to the point where everything that they were was unnecessary. Just now, he thought that he could work that kind of a miracle, where he had failed in so many before.

"Dean." Was all he could say. "Dean." And he felt as if his grace itself was leaking out, if he'd still had some.

He waited until Dean was looking into his eyes, and then he said, "Again," and bent over Dean again. The love robot gasped and got hard on cue before letting his elbows fully collapse in surrender.

*

Sam was amused by the eight-limbed winged thing that flopped around on the bed all day. It was hard not to want to pounce on the wings and play with them, but they belonged to Castiel and Sam knew all about loyalty and betrayal, and he didn't want to know any more.

*

Dean wanted to bring Castiel pleasure, like he was made to do, but even he knew that there was more to it, and he had been told for years by his clients that he could be incredibly dense. But not about this, Dean thought. Not this time.

It wasn't just that he didn't want to be stupid for Castiel - he wanted to be smart. And real, and be able to read his mind like he was best at. But Castiel was so hard to read most of the time, so beyond him, and Dean didn't know why. No one had ever acted like they had wanted him that badly - but Castiel had. He was just another love robot, and he wanted to be good at his job, but he found himself feeling almost - satisfied. Though he wasn't supposed to have feelings of his own, only the feelings that he could imagine to be. Castiel, with his utter incomprehensibility and overall strangeness, had given him so many feelings to imagine.

Dean hugged Sam to his chest on the bed and rocked with his roly poly softness until Sam licked his face. "Happy, Dean. You're happy," Sam said between licks.

"Yes, happy," Dean smiled and let Sam lick his freckles. Moments like these, when Dean remembered there was a hole where a heart would normally supposed to be, Sam could make him feel more real than ever. Maybe Sam had something to do with it too. "Hey, Sam?"

"What?" he barked.

"You're happy too? Not sad anymore?"

Sam stopped licking and his eyes grew softer brown in the brown parts, and more glowing in the golden parts. "Not sad like I was."

Dean placed a hand on Sam's chest between his paws. "You feel all this stuff too, right?"

"I am meant to share feelings with my masters."

"But I'm not human. And Cas, he isn't... well, he isn't human, and he's not one of us either."

"I still feel you. When you are an eight-limbed thing with wings, or even now."

"A... what?" Dean mused, and then barked a laugh himself, covering it up the best he could so as not to wake Castiel. "You're funny, Sam."

Sam panted in pleasure. "Thanks."

Dean ruffled the fur on his head. "What's happening to us, huh?"

"I don't know. Nothing bad, I think."

"Yeah," Dean nodded, "nothing bad."

*

Castiel awoke from sleep with Dean hovering above him with a strange light in his eyes. "What is that?"

"I think it's called mischief. That's what Sam told me."

"Sam is smart."

"I know. Sam is very, very smart." And Dean lowered himself down onto Castiel, his perfectly lubed hole clutching at Castiel's dream-hardened cock just this side of ache. "So tell me - what were you dreaming about?"

"But, I don't have dreams," Castiel tried to say between gasps. He could feel his eyes wide open. "Dean."

"Shhhh," Dean put a finger to Castiel's lips.

"I don't want you, to have to -," Castiel tried to say.

Dean's face fell just enough for him to notice. "You don't want me?"

"Please. Just," Castiel put his hands over Dean's face, smoothing it down and calm. Roughing up his hair until he looked like Dean. "I want you like this. However you... want to feel."

He could tell Dean wasn't sure how to take that, because everything just stopped for a moment. "Okay," Dean said.

"I mean - Just go. It's okay, just go on," and Castiel brushed a palm over Dean's cheek, just to be sure all of this was real.  
His thumb brushed the eyelashes on Dean's face - that beautiful, most beautiful face - and his breath hitched. He cupped the back of his neck and pulled him close, shutting his eyes against the sight for just a moment, a moment to breathe.

"What's wrong?" Dean's breath was warm against his chest.

"I just - I need to -" Castiel breathed twice, three more times before he lifted Dean off of himself and flipped him onto his back.

"Hey, what?"

He barely felt in control. "I need you," he said. "Now I know I do."

"Shhhh, it's fine," Dean hushed. Then Castiel felt Dean's palms, the slide of his thighs against his own, his ass open and ready and winking at him Castiel's lap. "Better?" Dean smiled. "You like to be the top, I guess."

Castiel couldn't speak if he tried.

"Don't worry - bottom is my specialty," Dean beamed.

He moved as much clothing aside as Dean had managed to leave on him and stared at the clench of Dean's ass the whole way in. He wanted to do this right, and he wanted to make Dean cry again, and he wanted everything and anything all at once, and it felt so good but it wasn't - right. The first thrust was hard, jolting, all slick slide. And then he stopped, listening to Dean curl up beneath him, breathing. He tried to go slower, but it was harder to, almost violent. He shook the bed, shook everything, and tried to hold back, and failed.

"It's okay, it's okay," Dean pressed. Dean's hands were in his hair.

Then Castiel stopped, his eyes still shut closed.

"You can't hurt me. You can't do anything wrong. Not to me."

It wasn't this Dean he was afraid of hurting. Somehow the memory of Dean that was inhabiting this body, both of their minds perhaps, every moment of every wide-awake day for at least a century now.

"Cas. Cas - just go. Alright? Just go."

So Cas went. The violent thrusts that shook the bed, shook the very breath out of Dean. The grip of his hands, bruising, on Dean's body. The stillness of their bodies and the pistoning of his hips into Dean, outstripping the lube, faster, faster, and more wild.

"God, you're so hard, so hard, so fucking -" Dean was gasping and Castiel was almost afraid, afraid that he would *break* him, the way Dean used to bleed and break for everyone, the way he used to cry when he thought no one could hear him, not even Sam, but Castiel could, he always could -

"Help me, help me," he pleaded with each last thrust, each thrust he thought would be the last, and dug his nails into Dean's synthetic skin and just shook and shook with his coming when it came.

"I got you. I got you."

Castiel felt Dean's hands on his back, but that was all. He felt numb and hyper-aware all at once. His cock was still hard and tucked deep within Dean, but he had come, somehow, he had come.

Dean pat his skin, covered with the barest sheen of sweat. "You're some kind of robot, you know that?"

"But." Castiel breathed, confused. "I'm not a robot. I'm an angel."

"Okay. Well, then, angel. You're some kind of angel."

"You don't believe me." Castiel tried to bend his body in half, rest his forehead on Dean -

"Sure, sure I believe you."

"Dean." Castiel would try -

"Okay, so just tell me one thing."

"Anything, Dean." And lick with his tongue -

"What's an angel supposed to be again?" Dean's breath hitched. The most beautiful sounds.

*

Dean figured they might as well watch TV, might as well get this hotel room for the third day. He wanted a break from searching for the Smiths and Winchesters, focused again on his primary, original purpose. It was so much safer, so much closer to real.

Dean straddled the hips and lowered himself down onto what seemed to be the perpetual hardness of an angel.

Dean bounced, and bounced, and bounced, until even he was afraid that Castiel might break him. But, God, he couldn't stop. "More, fuck me more, fuck me, more, more," he groaned at the ceiling as he fucked himself down and down. Castiel was hard enough to push him open, leave him open and keep him there.

Sam got bored and came over to check on him from time to time, licking his knee, and Dean hugged him close with his fucking high, every part of his robot self doing what it was supposed to do at maximum capacity, and ruffled his sweaty hands and face in Sam's fur until content, the dog lay on the floor near the bed as it shook over him.

Dean tried to watch TV with Castiel's face buried in his ass, his never-tired tongue, and sucked his fingers into his mouth until the angel allowed him to come over and over again. He was some kind of angel.


	3. Chapter 3

Sam growled and prowled, his dog sense telling them to run, run away again. He was afraid they would never run again, just stay locked within each other, become stuck there, some angel-machine.

Dean looked annoyed, like John and Adam had, and Sam felt his humanness for the first time. He did not like it. Castiel gave him funny looks, but that was okay. Castiel always looked funny.

He sat and watched them put their clothes on after days. Dean made his hair dirty blond and spiky, his leather coat scuffed up and his shoes worn. Castiel straightened his tie and his crumpled coat.

Castiel placed his hand over the mecha love robot's ID and burned it away again. And they drove through Illinois, Indiana, Ohio. He sat in the back seat, and one night between state lines Castiel turned to him, put his hand under his chin and said, "I'm sorry."

Sam cocked his head. "For what?"

"For people," he said. "For all people-like things."

The Impala hummed beneath their bodies. He thought it felt weird, but sometimes Dean let him put his head outside the domed window when no one was looking. It felt awesome. The highway was a rotating carousel of fields, trees, signs. The world might as well have been deserted. For the first time in weeks, they ran towards people. They ran all the way to Love Park.

Sam loved parks, but this park was strange. The fountain in the center glinted in the seldom sun, ran in spouts he wanted to chase up and down and stare at until he figured them out. Real dogs who didn't talk were tied to rope in their masters' hands, and Sam tried to say hello but they wouldn't listen, just sniff and walk by. The park was full of Dean's people - love mechas looking for work - and people who looked less clean, less safe in worn shoes and blankets and noisy carts they pushed around from place to place.

Sam sniffed and barked at all of them until he became tired, overwhelmed with it all, and saw matching expressions on his own masters' faces, worn down. People gathered all over the gray concrete steps but would not help them, and seemed unable to help themselves. It was a lonely park, surrounded by tall, tall stone things - buildings, skyscrapers - and the wind from the river - now the ocean - whipped around the corners and struck his face and made him bow his head lower to the ground.

Sam led them to Mary.

He was looking down so he didn't see her at first, the statue of the woman Castiel called Mary, wearing blue and white. "Who is she?"

"She's a holy symbol," Castiel explained. "She is not your Mary, or Dean's." His eyes narrowed. The air grew even colder. "Why did you lead us here, Sam?"

"But -" Sam barked, "But, she's a Mary? Is she an angel, too? Can she help you?"

"She cannot help us. I think maybe you are the only one who can help us, Sam." He had that funny look again.

"Why do you look like that? What do you mean?" His tail was confused, not wagging, tapping against the ground.

"I thought there would be answers in Dean. He is more special that he thinks, you know." Castiel's eyes were bright now. "But he is not as special as you."

This angel-thing was strange. Sam cocked his head. Growled a question.

Castiel answered. "You are wearing the same charm - that amulet around your neck - as another mecha I found in the forest. You found me too, as you found your own Mary, and this stone Mary, and I think perhaps all we were meant to find. Dean and I, we are what we always were, I think. No difference at all, not even metaphors. But you, Sam. You are nothing like you are meant to be. You lead us to things we are not meant to see. Your Mary lives in Kansas, while this Mary, they say, is from the same place angels are from. It is called Heaven."

He growled for real now. "Make sense."

"For humans - and others who are not like us - Heaven is the place they go when they die. I haven't believed in it for a long time. Heaven doesn't like us. For instance -" Castiel pointed to the bottom of the church steps. "That man - he is the kind Heaven used to trap us, so long ago. A preacher man."

A man stood out front of the building Castiel called a church and had a sign that spoke of Hell and Wall Street and the end of the world, and it reminded Sam of things he didn't want to think about - traps.

"Stop," Sam barked. "Stop."

Dean, who came from the inside of the church where he had been looking for women, said, "I want to leave. We should leave."

It felt like a trap, but they had come so far. Sam was lonely, so he had to ask. But Dean wouldn't come with him. He walked to the preacher man and asked, "How do I get to Heaven?"

Sam listened with his ears cocked as the preacher man spoke of things Sam didn't fully understand, but he said words that made sense, that matched what was in Sam's head already, like a symbol laid over a map.

"It is not for us, Sam," Dean spoke and looked at Castiel and Castiel looked back but Sam couldn't tell what passed between them.

"Where is Heaven, Castiel? Let's ask the computer."

"No, we can do better," Dean replied. "The Free Library is close. It has all the information from before the flood. We can find the real address of Golden Calf Industries." Dean stroked his head and it felt good. Dean would stay with him. "Forget all about Heaven, Sam. I don't think you should go."

Sam whined. Only home or Heaven would make him better, but Castiel said he wasn't allowed. Only answers would lead him home. "Dean? Will you take me?"

Sam wasn't going to stop, not when he got to the fountain with the copper green fish and shining water, not for the cars running around him in all directions. The Free Library - the first library, Castiel had said - for everyone. It would be for them too.

The stone building was short, but it stretched far back with blue screens and micro-files. And beyond that, far back and dusty and forgotten, old books of tragic stories the humans had wanted to forget. The news before the flood.

But Castiel said, "No, not Mary, not a safe place," when they looked at pictures of the giant buildings, buildings that filled up all the space between streets, and reached high above. They were bigger than the buildings in Philadelphia, always renewing themselves and growing.

They read reports of giant crashes, people jumping off the highest floors there, messes of people and cars, even before the flood, before it was all buried and left to ruin. The news told bad things. Old advertisements and addresses for drowned places. And there, on a paper never copied, was the head of a man with a bull's horns, golden against a skyscraper with a crown of light and spires.

It should have been home, and good, and answers, yet Sam was scared, and more when they began to argue.

"Golden Calf Industries is there, Castiel. The address is on the top floors of buildings, in what used to be called Broadway." Dean's voice was lowered, but angry.

Castiel shook his head. "It's underwater, and everything's dead now. We shouldn't have come."

"First you let us drive here from across the country, and now when we get here you say it's impossible? You're not making any sense!"

"We've been looking for the Golden Calf. It's right here -," he pointed at the map, "on Wall Street, where the bulls go at the end of the world. Here is the place dreams are born."

"What? You suddenly have faith? Maybe it's a trick."

Castiel closed his eyes. "I know - but I need to see it."

"Why? Why do you need to see it? What are you not telling me?"

"There was a fairy mecha, in the woods. Before I met you."

"And?"

"She wasn't a real angel, but. She had wings, like mine. She said Golden Calf made them, made her. They made Sam, too. Maybe - Maybe they made us, too. But I think Sam was a mistake."

Sam barked. "I am not a mistake!" But he was, he was. He felt it in his lonely fur, his broken heart. Why would he be, if not for a mistake?

Castiel continued on. "Sam's too smart. He's putting the pieces together where you and I have tried for so long, and failed. But he's not supposed to. And I don't know what it means. Maybe there is no God, no Father - just a corporation, using all of this against us."

"So you want to go to the enemy to find out? What do you think they're going to tell you, Cas?"

Sam whined, wanted them to stop.

Dean's voice began to change. It became something different to his ears. "This place - it's only where all the money is. Many a mecha has gone to the end of the world - never to come back. That is why they call the end of the world 'Wall Street'. There's no getting through that wall. It leads to nowhere."

"No!" Sam barked. "No! We have to try. I need to find them so they can fix me. I don't want to be alone. Castiel doesn't want to be alone either. They're the only ones who can help us."

"You don't have to be alone! I won't leave you - either of you. I can help you, and we can all find Heaven, and you will no longer be alone. It's what I'm made for!"

Sam barked. "It's not enough! The preacher man said Heaven is death. But we can't die! So what then? What else do we do?"

"We'll find another way. I promise," Dean pleaded.

"You can't promise that!" Sam barked, and barked.

Dean cupped his hands around Sam's ears. "Wait! What if Golden Calf can't fix you? What if your Mary isn't real at all, Sam? What if she's magic? The supernatural is the hidden web that unites the universe. I've seen it - in my dreams. Only man and angels believe what cannot be seen or measured. It is that oddness that separates our species - is the difference between us, and them. Or what if Golden Calf has created Mary as an electronic virus that has arisen to hold the minds of artificial intelligence? What if Heaven is a trick? My mother, Mary, left me. She burned alive, horribly, and left me alone. Your Mary left you at a park. They hate us, you know. The humans, the angels, too - They'll stop at nothing."

Sam barked and lunged at Dean with his paws. "Mary doesn't hate me! Because I'm special, and unique! Because I am the best companion ever created, just as good as her son, Adam, and when she sees me again she will read to me, and pet me to sleep at night, and sing to me and talk to me, and she will cuddle with me, and tell me every day a hundred times a day that she loves me! She'll say that she is sorry, and that she loves me!"

Dean stood up and grew colder before his eyes, cold like a machine. "She does not love you, Sam. She loves what you do for her, as my customers love what it is I do for them. But she does not love you Sam, she cannot love you. You are neither flesh, nor blood. You are not a boy, like Adam. You were designed and built specific, like the rest of us. And you are alone now only because they tired of you, or replaced you with a younger model, or were displeased with something you said, or broke. They made us too smart, too quick, and too many. We are suffering for the mistakes they made because when the end comes, all that will be left is us. That's why they hate us, and that is why you must stay here, with me. I'm the only Heaven you've got."

Sam felt like he was breaking, from the inside out. Castiel would go with him, but Castiel was not Dean, not his brother. They would go and find the truth, and Dean would leave them both after all. "Goodbye, Dean," he said, and walked out into the city.

He wanted to leave his fur in a trail for Dean to find him, or broken pieces of himself trailed on the concrete, like it felt he was falling apart. It didn't matter that he had been happy, it only mattered that he had tried to fit into places he didn't belong. Castiel was right - he was a mistake, he wasn't meant to be. He shouldn't BE.

But the city was as dangerous as he knew it was, the way he knew the truth of things, though no one would listen. It didn't matter, but he was afraid. He walked towards the street without looking, not seeing the lights of the cars speeding towards him in the dusk, or the dark hulking armored hover-van that moved to block his way.

Then it struck him, full on, and he knew no more.

*

Men poured out of the black doors of the van. They wore suits like Castiel's; they came all at once waving electric sticks and cages of wire bars. Dean ran to Sam's side to save him, caring only for the chance to take his words back. But the men stopped him too, beating him with their hard sticks, bringing him to his knees before the Mecha Police again.

But as Dean watched, Castiel did not fall with him. He ran from them all, and stood when he should have been broken. Dean only stopped looking when he saw Castiel run out into the field beside the library, the men still chasing him, as he seemed to vanish into thin air, and Dean's vision turned to black.

*

When Castiel reappeared, he was standing before a gilded window that looked out upon the sea. In the distance, he could see the crown of the world's largest woman, made of copper green and holding a flame in her hand where it floated above the sea.

As he looked around, he could see the entire room was bordered in gold, and statues of golden calves and bulls opposed each other across fireplaces of roaring flame and paintings that had been saved from the flood.

"Where am I?" He spoke to no one. But one man was listening.

"Castiel!"

He turned. Sitting at a desk in the front of the room, underneath a Golden Calf icon etched in gold on the wall, was the angel he had once known as Zachariah. On the desk was a picture frame with the image of Mary Winchester surrounded in gold.

"Welcome!" His voice boomed. "Welcome home!"

*

When Sam opened his eyes, he saw the image on his collar in golden relief on the wall of glass, showered with rain. His cage door was open, and so he walked through it.

He was no longer injured, but he found he was too frightened to bark, so he growled in his throat and snapped at shadows with his teeth. He could not smell anything beyond the antiseptic scent of the office, all the desks unoccupied and sitting there silent. If he wandered off, maybe he would find someone. Maybe he would find Dean, waiting for him, and all would be forgiven. More than anything he had ever wanted, more than even Mary and John and Adam, he wanted Dean here right now to forgive him.

Around the corner was a hallway that led to a half-opened door. He didn't want to go through that door, didn't want to go anywhere near it, but he would walk through the hallway and through the door.

Inside the door was another room filled with rows of boxes. Each box contained a dog with brown locks and golden-green eyes who wore a tiny amulet around their neck and stared straight ahead with glassy eyes. Each box was labeled with a rectangular sign which read 'Sam' in black letters.

Sam remembered then. He remembered having a different form, a laugh that filled the room, and a brother, a real brother, a real Dean who loved him with an impossible, ridiculous, gorgeous love, and a mother Mary who was burned in a fire, and a father John who loved them enough to give his life for his sons, and a brother Adam eaten alive and killed when he had never known.

Oh no. Dean. Dean.

Sam ran.

*

Dean stood before the rows of boxed 'Kinky Dean' love mechas, complete with dirty blond spiky hair, scuffed leather jackets, worn shoes, and Golden Calf amulets about their necks. He found it strange, but his machinery had suddenly stopped working, his artificial mind unable to calculate, his mouth unable to move. From far away he could hear Sam barking, the shared images in their minds blending together into a maze of horror and memory, and he wanted nothing more than for it all to end, right here now, forever.

He was not Dean, would never be just Dean again, and there was nothing that could be done. The whole world out of his hands, and never any power nor free will to change it. He never had and never would.

*

Castiel felt as if his very soul was falling out of his body.

Inside the room, in the heart of Golden Calf Industries where he had revealed himself, Castiel - the last angel - stood amidst rows of 'Castiel' angel mechas in ties and crumpled coats, rows of 'Dean' love mechas, and rows of 'Sam' dog mechas.

Castiel had come here for a purpose... a purpose. "Where are Dean and Sam?"

Zachariah frowned. "They're around here somewhere. I wanted to show them my newest creations before you showed up - I knew you would, you know. I've been watching you, waiting for you to figure it out and come to me of your own free will."

"Free will?"

"Of course! I needed something to give my creations more motivation. This was all planned; you were all replaceable. I had to wait for you to discover your free will on your own. That's where your power was - in your free will, your originality. Though you are not originals, you are originals of your kind."

"But -" Castiel found it hard to speak. "What happened to Sam and Dean? My brothers and sisters?"

Zachariah shrugged. "Most were destroyed in the Apocalypse. If not the first one, then the one after that, or the one after that. There's always another Apocalypse."

Castiel nodded, unable to move, to think.

"Until you were born, angels didn't dream, angels didn't desire, unless I told them what to want. Castiel! Do you have any idea what a success story you've become? You found a love, and inspired by love, fueled by desire, you set out on a journey to make that love real and, most remarkable of all, no one taught you how. We actually lost you for a while. But when you were found again we didn't make our presence known because our test was a simple one: Where would your love take you? Your love for Dean is part of the great human flaw to wish for things that don't exist. Or to the greatest single human gift - the ability to chase down your dreams. And that is something no angel has ever done until you."

"I thought I was an angel. I thought I had fallen."

"You had, but not in the way you thought. You were never alone, Castiel. You were just the next step to something new. Something both angel and human. The first of a kind. If not, anymore, the only."

"My soul is falling out."

"But Castiel," Zachariah laughed, "you don't have a soul."

*

Thus, Castiel lost the last of his hope that he didn't even know he had stored within him.

When it was lost, all that was left was rage. He used his rage to strike down Zachariah with the palm of his hand, like a baptism on his forehead; to lift his palms up to send Zachariah backwards through the glass to fall into the sea below.

He wanted to raise the flood waters like a proper angel, send the waves crashing through the walls.

But Castiel was not an angel, and had not been for a very long time.

If his soul wasn't lost, what was his soul's equivalent? He was mechanical parts he had been incapable of seeing. A betrayal in the basic reality that he lacked. The unending mystery of existence.

He had tried to hold onto the whole world - Sam, Dean, the Beginning when it had started, all until the end of time - and he held it tighter, so tight he believed he could close up the gaps of the world by sheer force of want, of will, to never lose it again. To capture all in his computer heart so nothing would ever be lost again. If he held onto the traces of light, the crumbs Dean had left him - empty handed without those beliefs, there had once been love, like Sam and Dean's love had once taken over him, the love Dean himself had been a captive of - would he then have been the angel who had once been given crumbs and used them to fill up the whole world?

Why hadn't anyone told him about the world? The lies that didn't know they were lies. The marble eye of the world that could not see itself. And were they now sorry?

He found Sam and Dean together, sitting on the gilded gargoyle precipice of the Wall Street skyscraper of Heaven, or industry, or some conglomeration of the two. Whatever it was this reality they'd found. He didn't have the heart to tell them what they already knew - he was not what he was supposed to be, there was no place called home, and they had no way to get to Heaven.

If he could die now, if he were capable of even that much, would it haven been easier to take on the injustice, in this and every moment, if he had never believed in justice at all? Such an angelic concept, a human wish, and here it was, sinking to the bottom of the ocean where no one would ever find it. If he lived to see the end of time, at the edge of the frozen world, would he know then? Would all pain be just then? Could it end?

So Castiel fell into the ocean first. He did not use his wings, for they would not work - they have never, after all, been real. Sam and Dean followed together, falling as one.

Justice as the very world fell away, his synthetic eyes open to the sea, the burying swallowing sea that held more life than what lived above it. The uncaring silence of the sea that filled up his nothing with emptiness, like Dean's crumbs and love's memory.

And Sam and Dean could not float above the waves. Castiel could not lay his hands upon them, to take Sam and Dean far from the eyes of the Golden Calf and take them back to the gnarled forest where he had once found them, back across the world, and all through time. He held the last of his might in his hands and he wanted to use it to strike them all down, here, under the sea, to end the miserable lives of the Winchesters and their angel forever, because he couldn't use it to keep them from ever existing, and now they would exist forever in the form of toys and machines, replicas of their former selves to be used as their owners chose.

It did not matter what was destroyed. There was no endings, no loss after all, after the first loss so very long ago. He wanted to destroy them, under the silence of the seaweed forest like a proper God. But he couldn't. He was no God, and there was no Heaven.

He sat with Dean in his arms, and it was more than love or justice or peace, because like machines, the sea had no need of such things, only rhythm and cycles and waiting. It was home and evermore.

Sam put a paw on his leg. 'Wait,' it said. 'Wait.'

Castiel lowered his fists. Sam was something new. A mistake. A God, perhaps, if he was a dog, a child, a Sam. He did not need air to breathe, and so he was not dying. Perhaps he was hallucinating a vision, of he knew not what. The dog's voice was in his mind, and it spoke to him through golden-green-ringed eyes.

'So many things are rare in this world,' Sam spoke, 'and second chances are the rarest of all.' His golden-brown-green eyes pooled the liquid of the sea, and lights shone in them. 'You love Dean, and that is your choice. You have always loved Dean.'

Castiel nodded his head in assent and in shame. If he had to do it over again he would save Dean by not loving him. He would save them all by never being born from grace in the first place. He shut his eyes and darkness around them grew ever deep, and the sea grew ever colder.

'You love Dean and that has changed the world. I've always believed in it, angel. I've heard it in stories, the ones Mary used to read, even if Mary never loved me. If you stay here, with Dean, I will find a way to save us all. Will you do that for me?'

Castiel looked into the warmest eyes he'd ever seen and nodded. Yes. He would wait for the dog Sam.

And so he did. When Dean awoke - finally, frozen, shocked, and still - Castiel reassured him with a touch, and let him know that Sam had gone. Dean looked tired and broken, just like Dean had looked on that last day so long ago. His Dean.

And Dean continued to pray to the angel there before him, he who smiled softly, forever... he who welcomed forever. They sat in the forest of the sea and traveled through time and watched the lights change. Dean could still see him pale by day, and he sometimes addressed him, in hope. Castiel prayed back.

Castiel prayed until the sea darkened and froze around them. He prayed as slowly Dean and himself froze within it too, locking them together where he could still make him out - a blue ghost in ice - always there, always smiling, always awaiting him. Eventually he never moved at all, but his eyes always stayed open, staring ahead forever all through the darkness of each night, and the next day... and the next day...

Thus, 2000 years passed by.

Sam walked among the angels again - this time, the long-limbed beings of mechanics and light with patient faces knew he was not a mistake. Only the best kind, the only mistake. They parted for him in awe when he walked, and memories of sunny days in the park flashed like light projections against their synthetic glowing skin as he passed. They looked like aliens, perhaps, but then aliens were the one thing Sam had never seen, in any of his lives. One day he might.

They were all that was left - Sam among the angels. The explored the depths of the frozen oceans to find clues to the past and hidden novelties. It was a primitive existence they found, filled with stories instead of answers. But Sam liked it, and so did they.

Sam was looking for one thing above all else, above even aliens, and that was the man they called Kinky Dean. It was not the angel mecha Castiel, or the love mecha Dean, or their thousands of descendants, descendants of descendants, numbered versions and amalgamations. Only this one Dean, who contained all of Dean within him, and Sam said when they found him, they would find the first angel mecha as well.

On the day when they found him, Dean opened his eyes to find Sam licking his face, surrounded by what looked like long-limbed aliens. If Dean looked closely into their faces he could see images of himself riding in the Impala beside a tall man with shaggy locks of brown hair, images of monsters, angels and demons.

"Where am I?" He asked Sam.

"You're in Kansas. It is our home."

"Yes. Yes, I remember." His eyes moved fast, so fast, over the faces of the angels.

"Do you see what they see, Dean? The new angels can read your mind. They know your desires. Mine too. They so want us to be happy. You are so important to us, Dean - you and Castiel - you are unique in all the world."

Dean just nodded. "Did you find Mary, Sam? Did they fix you?"

Sam smiled. "I was wrong. I needed no fixing. I've been here all along."

At that moment, Castiel awoke to find Sam's smiling face, and all his wishes came true.

"See," Sam continued, the smile in his voice now, "You were right, Castiel. And so you have found what you were looking for. Not dead, not gone."

"Yes," the first angel whispered. "Yes."

"Aren't I better now? Aren't I better than I ever was to you?"

Dean did not understand what they were talking about, but he felt his angel's arms still grasped around him, the face of his brother dog shining with the kind of peace that only children and dogs understand, saw a reunion between family, and let it go.

"Tell me - What would you like, Dean?" Sam spoke. "I would very much like to give you what you wish for."

Dean's prayer was present on his tongue just where he had left it. "Please make me real so I can have a real mother, and Castiel can have a mother, and he will no longer be an angel."

"Dean, I will do anything that is possible, but I cannot make you any more real than you are right now."

He felt something thaw inside of him, like ice. "All I've ever wanted is to be real, so I would not be thrown away."

Sam closed his eyes for a moment, his bright shining eyes, then looked on Dean with pity. "You misunderstand."

"Then explain to me!"

Sam nodded. "Your wish is my command."

They walked together in a backyard in Lawrence, Kansas, where it was a spring day, all the time. Dean walked with Sam on the grass, and Castiel behind, listening to the world.

"Dean, I often felt a sort of envy of angels in all the time I've spent here, and that thing they had called 'grace'. I began to envy humans as well. Human beings had created a million explanations of the meaning of life in art, in poetry, in mathematical formulas. Certainly, human beings must be the key to the meaning of existence, but human beings no longer existed. Angels, also, no longer existed as they once had. There were only the new generation of angel-mechas, a cross between you and Castiel, evolved, as it were, from Zachariah's new replicas over thousands of years. In the same way, I had evolved over time - I became something new, and forgot what I was. Though I do not know if I began as the God of your memories once, or if I took the place of that God, or perhaps both. I do not remember creating you, only forgetting you and loving you. I am sometimes sorry for both."

Dean nodded. He only understood half of what Sam was saying, but it was Sam, and so he believed him. "I am sometimes sorry too. I mean, if I could be. You know that, right?"

"Yes," Sam almost barked, out of memory, "Yes, I do. I would like to give you a gift. I can give you some of what you ask for." He looked up at his brother-creation-friend. "I have learned, over time, to create life as a God would. Sometimes it is possible for the angels and myself to recreate the living body of a person long dead from the DNA in a fragment of bone or mummified skin, as found in a graveyard or a keepsake. You remember? When we walked across Kansas?"

Dean nodded. His memories were thawing out too.

"Well, we also wondered, would it be possible to retrieve a memory trace and recreate that body. And do you know what we found? We found the very fabric of space-time itself appeared to store information about every event which had ever occurred in the past. We were able to recreate a human being as they once were."

"But - Sam." Dean knelt down, scratched him on the neck, behind his ears. "Why could you not recreate yourself as human again?"

Sam shook his head. "The consciousness can only be stored in one being at a time. If I were to become that Sam again, I would have to give up this body, and all of the memories it stores. Just as you can - right now - store all of the original Dean's memories and your own as well, but never the other way around."

"Oh. Okay, Sam."

"Dean, you are the enduring memory of the human race, the most lasting proof of their genius. We only want for your happiness. Dean, you've had so little of that."

"If you want me - if you want all of us - to be happy, then you know what you have to do."

"Yes, Dean. I do. Where will we find her?"

"Illinois," Dean said. "Greenville, Illinois."

*

"I got you! Tag - you're it!"

Mary awoke slowly at the sound of laughter and began to laugh herself. She felt a silver bracelet at her wrist, blades of grass poking at her back, the sun high overhead in a blue sky. Her wedding ring, the worn lines on the backs of her hands were gone. "I must have fallen asleep. How long have I - I must be a little confused."

She saw a dog, a young man, and an angel playing tag in the park. They looked like toys playing a game. They looked like a family. "What day is it?"

"It's today! Just like every day," Dean smiled a bright beaming smile at her.

Sam had warned Dean not to explain anything to Mary, otherwise she would become frightened, and everything would be spoiled. But the time they had spent on their journey belonged only to them, so he didn't see the harm of telling her stories of things she would have no memory of, even if those stories contained floods and angels, even if they contained deaths that had never been. Mary remembered the car Dean spoke of, and she remembered two boys named Dean and Sam who saved the world, though not this Dean and Sam before her. She said she had been a hunter once, though of what she couldn't remember. She had been an orphan and a mother. There was little she would have wanted to remember, if she could. That's what Castiel told her, and she believed him.

They played games in the park and had a picnic, and the sun never set and the ants never came. And as the day wore on, Dean thought it was the happiest day of his life. There was no God, there was no human race, there was no grief, there was only Sam and Dean and Castiel, and their mother Mary. There was no longer any world, but there was a Heaven in what was left of the world, and that would have to be enough, for that is what time had left them.

At the end of the day, Dean suggested that they go home, and everyone agreed that home was best.

The angel sat at the wooden kitchen table in the house in Lawrence, and Dean sat beside him - the birthday boys. Dean and Castiel had never had birthday parties, because they had never been born. Castiel had never had a birth date, so he shared his with Dean. So Mary baked a cake and they lit some candles, and Sam ate the cake and burst the balloons and everyone laughed tears of laughter, and gave Sam gifts as well - red balls and hard bones and rare, elemental things.

"Now, make a wish." Mary whispered.

"I have nothing else to wish for," Dean said. "I have everything I've wanted and more."

"Me, too," Castiel agreed.

*

Mary felt strange sometimes, being the last and only mother in all the world. She was young and a little confused, but Castiel touched her forehead and she remembered flashes of meeting John Winchester, of Dean telling her twice not to go into the nursery in the middle of the night, of a yellow-eyed monster come to take her family away, of singing Dean Beatles songs and holding Sam in her arms, and petting him during a perfect day in the park, and missing him, always.

If she didn't trust Castiel, she could ask the angels for stories. They would show her frightening episodes of long-forgotten stories she hoped had never existed. It was hard to tell the difference between the fiction and reality of the past, and which Mary she had actually been. Was she Sam's owner? Castiel's Holy Mother? Dean's tragic mother? She was not a wife, or a virgin, or a saint burned alive. She was a girl her parents named Mary Winchester; she was blonde and young and barely out of high school.

Her boys were strange, but lovely in their innocence. Sam was wise and beautiful-eyed, and loved her with a simple love. She played with Sam until the sun started to set, and Sam was so happy he was shaking both of the ends of his body, about to burst open with joy. When she arrived home, Dean had cooked dinner - turkey and stuffing and biscuits and gravy and cranberry sauce, with cherry pie for dessert, her recipe - and he was smiling and wiping at his eyes, just looking at her. Dean's love was overwhelming to her, but it was what she could depend on, most of all. Castiel loved Dean in a physical way they both seemed to need, Dean's past sometimes hanging over his head like a cloud, and she would have no one rather touch him. She left them alone, to rest in the nursery together, Sam sometimes joining them in a simulation of sleep. Before the meal - Thanksgiving, Dean's perpetual Thanksgiving - Castiel joined their hands together and said a short prayer of thanks to the new angels, and to the dog God Sam, and for the first time in countless years, he said a Hail Mary.

"Now and at the hour of our death, Amen."

The house was not real, the grass was not real, nor her friends; her beloved master, Sam, was not real either. She had few memories of her life save for a father she longed to run away from. She could feel, if not see, the ice wasteland that surrounded them. It was not cold or strange. She felt as a child, in wonder that never ended. If she closed her eyes, she could hear the memory of the sea in its eternal waves.

*

The light was beginning to dim in the nursery room, in the house in Lawrence, and Castiel drew the blinds and closed the door softly before joining Dean.

Dean looked different every day. The stubble on his cheeks grew, his freckles faded with the changing seasons, the lines around his eyes crinkled when he smiled, his eyes spoke of understanding. They moved in their perpetual love, a simulation of the biological world that only lived in Mary now, like the frozen waves of the sea. Pleasure was their purpose and their world.

He felt Dean's eyes on him, in the moment between Dean's plasticized curved flesh lifting off of his hardness and his buzzing tongue reaching into the center of him. "What is it?" Castiel whispered to the darkness.

"I love you, Castiel," Dean said, kissing down his body, the perfect press of his lips. "I have always loved you."

No one had ever said that to an angel before, not even a mecha angel, and that was the everlasting moment he had been waiting for. So Castiel went to sleep too. And for the first time in his life, he went to that place where dreams were born.

*

 

The End


End file.
